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THE BOOK OF SUSAN 





THE 

BOOK OF SUSAN 

A Novel 

BY 

LEE WILSON DODD 



** Though she track the wilds , 
Though she breast the crags , 
Choosing no path — 

Her kirtle tears not , 

Her ankles gleam , 

Her sandals are silver 


NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



Copyright, 1920 , 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


All Rights Reserved 



First printing April, 1920 


M -l wo 


Printed in the United States of America 


en< 

v 


©CU571502 


JOSEPHI FRATRIBUS 


NON QUOD VOLUI 
SED QUOD POTUI 



/ 








CONTENTS 


PAGE 


The First Chapter 1 

The Second Chapter 24 

The Third Chapter 62 

The Fourth Chapter . . 131 

The Fifth Chapter . . . . 153 

The Sixth Chapter 221 

The Last Chapter 238 





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I 
























THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

























































# 






THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


THE FIRST CHAPTER 

i 

I T happens that I twice saw Susan ’s mother, one of those 
soiled rags of humanity used by careless husbands for 
wiping their boots ; but Susan does not remember her. 
John Stuart Mill studied Greek at three, and there is 
a Russian author who recalls being weaned as the first of 
his many bitter experiences. Either Susan’s mental life 
did not waken so early or the record has faded. She re- 
members only the consolate husband, her father; remem- 
bers him only too well. The backs of his square, angry- 
looking hands were covered with an unpleasant growth 
of reddish bristles ; his nostrils were hairy, too, and seemed 
formed by Nature solely for the purpose of snorting with 
wrath. It must not be held against Susan that she never 
loved her father; he was not created to inspire the softer 
emotions. Nor am I altogether certain just why he was 
created at all. 

Nevertheless, Robert Blake was in his soberer hours — 
say, from Tuesdays to Fridays — an expert mechanic, thor- 
oughly conversant with the interior lack of economy of 
most makes of automobiles. He had charge of the repair 
department of the Eureka Garage, New Haven, where my 
not-too-robust touring car of those primitive days spent, 
during the spring of 1907, many weeks of interesting and 
expensive invalidism. I forget how many major opera- 
tions it underwent. 


1 


2 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


It was not at the Eureka Garage, however, that I first 
met Bob Blake. Nine years before I there found him 
again, I had defended him in court — as it happens, suc- 
cessfully — on a charge of assault with intent to kill. That 
was almost my first case, and not far — thank heaven — 
from my last. Bob’s defense, I remember, was assigned 
to me by a judge who had once borrowed fifty dollars 
from my father, which he never repaid; at least, not in 
cash. There are more convenient methods. True, my 
father was no longer living at the time I was appointed 
to defend Bob ; but that is a detail. 

Susan was then four years old. I can’t say I recall her, 
if I even laid eyes on her. But Mrs. Bob appeared as a 
witness, at my request — it was all but her final appear- 
ance, poor woman; she died of an embolism within a 
week — and I remember she told the court that a kinder 
husband and father than Bob had never existed. I re- 
member, too, that the court pursed its lips and the gen- 
tlemen of the jury grinned approvingly, for Mrs. Bob 
could not easily conceal something very like the remains 
of a purple eye, which she attributed to hearing a suspi- 
cious noise one night down cellar, a sort of squeaking 
noise, and to falling over the cat on her tour of investiga- 
tion — with various circumstantial minutice of no present 
importance. 

The important thing is, that Bob went scot-free and 
was as nearly grateful as his temperament permitted. 
His assault — with an umbrella stand — had been upon a 
fellow reveller of no proved worth to the community, and 
perhaps this may have influenced the jury’s unexpected 
verdict. 

Of Susan herself my first impression was gained at the 
Eureka Garage. Bob Blake, just then, was lying be- 
neath my car, near which I hovered listening to his 
voluble but stereotyped profanity. He had lost the nut 
from a bolt, and, unduly constricted, sought it vainly, 
while his tongue followed the line of least resistance. I 
was marveling at the energy of his wrath and the poverty 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


3 


of his imagination, when I became aware of a small being 
beside me, in plaid calico. She had eager black eyes — ter- 
rier’s eyes — in a white, whimsical little face. One very 
long and very thin black pigtail dangled over her left 
shoulder and down across her flat chest to her waist, 
where it was tied with a shoe string and ended lankly, 
without even the semblance of a curl. In her right hand 
she bore a full dinner pail, and with her left thumb 
she pointed toward the surging darkness beneath my 
car. 

“Say, mister, please,” said the small being, “if I was to 
put this down, would you mind telling him his dinner’s 
come ? ’ ’ 

4 ‘ Not a bit, ’ ’ I responded. ‘ ‘ Are you Bob ’s youngster ? ’ ’ 

“I’m Susan Blake,” she answered; and very softly 
placed the dinner pail on the step of the car. 

“Why don’t you wait and see your father?” I sug- 
gested. * ‘ He ’ll come up for air in a minute. ’ ’ 

“That’s why I’m going now,” said Susan. 

Whereupon she gave a single half skip — the very ghost 
of a skip — then walked demurely from me and out through 
the great door. 

ii 

Bob Blake, in those days, lived in a somewhat dilapi- 
dated four-room house, off toward the wrong end of Birch 
Street. His family arrangements were peculiar. He had 
never married again; but not very long after his wife’s 
death a dull-eyed, rather mussy young woman, with a 
fondness for rouge pots, had taken up her abode with 
him — to the scandal and fascination of the neighborhood. 
It was an outrage, of course ! With a child in the house, 
too ! Something ought to be done about it ! 

Yet, oddly enough, nothing that much worried Bob ever 
was done about it, reckoning the various shocked-and- 
grieved forms of conversation as nothing. As he never 
tired of asserting, Bob didn’t give a damn for the cackle 
of a lot of hens. He guessed he knew his way about; 


4 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and so did Pearl. Let the damned hens cackle their heads 
off; he was satisfied! 

And so, eventually, I am forced to believe, were the 
hens. In the earlier days of the scandal there was much 
clitter-clatter of having the law on him, serving papers, 
and the like; but, as hen cackle sometimes will, it came 
to precisely naught. Nor am I certain that, as the years 
passed, the neighborhood did not grow a little proud of 
its one crimson patch of wickedness; I am reasonably cer- 
tain, indeed, that more than one drab life took on a little 
borrowed flush of excitement from its proximity. 

Of course no decent, God-fearing woman would ever 
greet either Bob or Pearl; but every time one passed 
either of them without a nod or a “How’s things to-day?” 
it gave one something to talk about, at home, or over 
any amicable fence. 

As for the men, they too were forbidden to speak; but 
men, most of them, are unruly creatures if at large. You 
can’t trust them safely five minutes beyond the sound of 
your voice. 

There was even one man, old Heinze, proprietor of the 
Birch Street grocery store, who now and then cautiously 
put forth a revolutionary sentiment. 

“Dey lifs alvays togedder — like man unt vife — nod? 
Yere iss der diffurunz, Mrs. Shay?” 

“Shame on you for them words, Mr. Heinze!” 

“After” — with a slow, wide smile — “vere iss der diffur- 
unz, Mrs. Shay? I leaf id to you?” 

That Pearl and Bob lived always together cannot be 
denied, and perhaps they also lived as some men and their 
lawful wives are accustomed to live — off toward the wrong 
end of city streets; and occasionally, no doubt, toward 
the right end of them as well. Midweek, things wore 
along dully enough, but over Sunday came drink and 
ructions. Susan says she has never been able to un- 
derstand why Sunday happens to be called a day of 
rest. The day of arrest, she was once guilty of nam- 
ing it. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


5 


Bob’s neighbors, I fear, were not half so scandalized 
by his week-end drunkenness as by what Mrs. Perkins — 
three doors nearer the right end of Birch Street — in- 
variably called his “ brazen immorality.” Intoxication 
was not a rare vice in that miscellaneous block or two of 
factory operatives. Nor can it be said that immorality, 
in the sense of Mrs. Perkins, was so much rare as it w r as 
nervously concealed. The unique quality of Bob’s sin lay 
in its brazen element; that was what stamped him pe- 
culiarly as a social outlaw. 

Bob accepted this position, if sober, with a grim disre- 
gard. He had a bitter, lowering nature at best, and when 
not profane was taciturn. As for Pearl, social outlawry 
may be said to have been her native element. She had a 
hazy mind in a lazy body, and liked better than most 
things just to sit in a rocking-chair and polish her finger 
nails, as distinguished from cleaning them. Only the 
guiltless member of this family group really suffered 
from its low social estate, but she suffered acutely. Little 
Susan could not abide being a social outlaw. 

True, she was not always included in the general con- 
demnation of her family by the grown-ups; but the chil- 
dren were ruthless. They pointed fingers, and there was 
much conscious giggling behind her back; while some of 
the daintier little girls — the very little girls whom Susan 
particularly longed to chum with — had been forbidden to 
play with “that child,” and were not at all averse to tell- 
ing her so, flatly, with tiny chins in air and a devastating 
expression of rectitude on their smug little faces. At 
such times Susan would fight back impending cataracts, 
stick her own freckled nose toward the firmament, and 
even, I regret to say, if persistently harassed, thrust forth 
a rigid pink tongue. This, Susan has since informed me, 
is the embryonic state of “swearing like anything.” 

The little boys,^ on the whole, were better. They often 
said cruel things/ but Susan felt that they said them in a 
quite different spirit from their instinctively snobbish and 
Grundyish sisters — said them merely by way of bravado, 


6 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


or just for the fun of seeing whether or not she would cry. 
And then they often let her join in their games, and on 
those happy occasions treated her quite as an equal, with 
an impartial and, to Susan, entirely blissful roughness. 
Susan early decided that she liked boys much better than 
girls. 

There was, for example, Jimmy Kane, whose widowed 
mother took in washing, and so never had any time to 
clean up her huddled flat, over Heinze’s grocery store, or 
her family of four — two boys and two girls. No one ever 
saw skin, as in itself it really is, on the faces of Mrs. 
Kane’s children, and Jimmy was always, if comparison be 
possible, the grimiest of the brood. For some reason 
Jimmy always had a perpetual slight cold, and his funny 
flat button of a nose wept, winter and summer alike, 
though never into an unnecessary handkerchief. His 
coat-sleeve served, even if its ministrations did not add 
to the tidiness of his countenance. 

Susan often wished she might scrub him, just to see 
what he really looked like; for she idolized Jimmy. Not 
that Jimmy ever had paid any special attention to her, 
except on one occasion. It was merely that he accepted 
her as part of the human scheme of things, which in itself 
would almost have been enough to win Susan ’s affectionate 
admiration. But one day, as I have hinted, he became the 
god of her idolatry. 

The incident is not precisely idyllic. A certain Joe — 
Giuseppe Gonfarone ; cetat. 14 — whose father peddled 
fruit and vegetables, had recently come into the neighbor- 
hood; a black-curled, brown-eyed little devil, already far 
too wise in the manifold unseemliness of this sad old 
planet. Joe was strong, stocky, aggressive, and soon posed 
as something of a bully among the younger boys along 
Birch Street. Within less than a month he had infected 
the minds of many with a new and rich vocabulary of 
oaths and smutty words. Joe was not of the uncon- 
sciously foul-mouthed; he relished his depravity. In fact, 
youngster as he was, Joe had in him the makings of that 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


7 


slimiest product of our cities — the street pimp, or cadet. 

It was one fine spring day, three years or so before I met 
Susan in the Eureka Garage, that Joe, with a group of 
Birch Street boys, was playing marbles for keeps, just at 
the bottom of the long incline which carries Birch Street 
down to the swamp land and general dump at the base 
of East Rock. Susan was returning home from Orange 
Street, after bearing her father his full dinner pail, and 
as she came up to the boys she halted on one foot, using 
the toe of her free foot meanwhile to scratch mosquito 
bites upward along her supporting shin. 

“H’lo, Susan!” called Jimmy Kane, with his perfunc- 
tory good nature. ‘‘What’s bitin ’ you?” 

Then it was his turn to knuckle-down. Susan, still 
balanced cranelike, watched him eager-eyed, and was so 
delighted when he knocked a fine fat reeler of Joe’s out 
of the ring, jumping up with a yell of triumph to pocket 
it, that she too gave a shrill cheer: “Oh, goody! I knew 
you’d win!” 

The note of ecstasy in her tone infuriated Joe. “Say!” 
he shrieked. “You getta hell outta here!” 

Susan’s smile vanished; her white, even teeth — she had 
all her front ones, she tells me; she was ten — clicked 
audibly together. 

“ It ’s no business of yours ! ’ ’ she retorted. 

“You’re right; it ain’t!” This from Jimmy, still in 
high good humor. “You stay here if you want. You’re 
as good as him!” 

“Who’s as good as me?” 

“She is!” 

“Eer?” Joe’s lips curled back. He turned to the other 
boys, who had all scrambled to their feet by this time 
and, instinctively scenting mischief, were standing in a 
sort of ring. “He says she’s good as me!” 

Two of the smallest boys tittered, from pure excite- 
ment. Susan’s nose went up. 

“I’m better. I’m not a dago!” 


8 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Joe leaped toward Susan and thrust his dense, bull-like 
head forward, till his eyes were glaring into hers. 

“Mebbe I live lika you — eh? Mebbe I live, ,, cried Joe, 
‘ ‘ with a dirty whore!” 

There was a gasp from the encircling boys as Susan 
fell back from this word, which she did not wholly com- 
prehend, but whose vileness she felt, somehow, in her very 
flesh. Joe, baring gorilla teeth, burst into coarse jubila- 
tion. 

It was just at this point that Jimmy Kane, younger 
than Joe by a year or more, and far slighter, jumped 
on the little ruffian — alas, from behind ! — and dealt him as 
powerful a blow on the head as he could compass; a blow 
whose effectiveness, I reluctantly admit, was enhanced 
by the half brick with which Jimmy had first of all pru- 
dently provided himself. Joe Gonfarone went to earth, 
inert, but bleeding profusely. 

There was a scuttling of frightened feet in every direc- 
tion. Susan herself did not stop running until she reached 
the very top of the Birch Street incline. Then she looked 
back, her eyes lambent, her heart throbbing, not alone 
from the rapid ascent. Yes, there was Jimmy — her 
Jimmy! — kneeling in the dust by the still prostrate Joe. 
Susan could not hear him, but she knew somehow from 
his attitude that he was scared to death, and that he was 
asking Joe if he was hurt much. She agonized with her 
champion, feeling none the less proud of him, and she 
waited for him at the top of the rise, hoping to thank 
him, longing to kiss his hands. 

But Jimmy, when he did pass her, went by without a 
glance, at top speed. He was bound for a doctor. So 
Susan never really managed to thank Jimmy at all. She 
merely idolized him in secret, a process which proved, 
however, fairly heart-warming and, in the main, satis- 
factory. 

It took three stitches to mend Joe’s head — a fact famous 
in the junior annals of Birch Street for some years— 
and soon after he appeared, somewhat broken in spirit, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


9 


in the street again, his parents moved him, Margharita 
and the sloe-eyed twins to Bridgeport — very much, be it 
admitted, to the relief of Jimmy Kane, who had lived for 
three weeks nursing a lonely fear of dark reprisals. 


m 

There was one thing about Bob Blake’s four-room house 
— it exactly fitted his family. The floor plan was simple 
and economically efficient. Between the monolithic door 
slab — relic of a time when Bob’s house had been frankly 
“in the country” — and the public street lay a walk 
formed of a single plank supported on chance-set bricks. 
From the door slab one stepped through the front door- 
way directly into the parlor. Beyond the parlor lay the 
kitchen, from which one could pass out through a narrow 
door to a patch of weed-grown back yard. A ladderlike 
stair led up from one side of the kitchen, opposite to the 
single wundow and the small coal range. At the top of 
the stair was a slit of unlighted hallway with a door near 
either end of it. The door toward Birch Street gave 
upon the bedroom occupied by Bob and Pearl; the rear- 
ward door led to Susan’s sternly ascetic cubiculum. No 
one of these four rooms could be described as spacious, 
but the parlor and Bob«s bedroom may have been twelve 
by fifteen or thereabouts. Susan’s quarters were a scant 
ten by ten. 

The solider and more useful pieces of furniture in the 
house belonged to the regime of Susan’s mother — the great 
black-walnut bed which almost filled the front bedroom; 
Susan’s single iron cot frame; the parlor table with its 
marble top; the melodeon; the kitchen range; and the 
deal table in the kitchen, upon which, impartially, food 
was prepared and meals were served. To these respectable 
properties Pearl had added from time to time certain 
other objects of interest or art. 

Thus, in the parlor, there was a cane rocking-chair, 
gilded ; and on the wall above the melodeon hung a banjo 


10 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


suspended from a nail by a broad sash of soiled blue rib- 
bon. On the drumhead of the banjo someone had painted 
a bunch of nondescript flowers, and Pearl always claimed 
these as her own handiwork, wrought in happier days. 
This was her one eagerly contested point of pride ; for Bob, 
when in liquor, invariably denied the possibility of her 
ever having painted 4 ‘that there bouquet.” This flat 
denial was always the starting point for those more vio- 
lent Sunday-night quarrels, which had done so much to 
reduce the furniture of the house to its stouter, more im- 
perishable elements. 

During the brief interval between the death of Susan’s 
mother and the arrival of Pearl, Bob had placed his do- 
mestic affairs in the hands of an old negro-woman, who 
came in during the day to clean up, keep an eye on 
Susan and prepare Bob’s dinner. Most of the hours 
during Bob’s absence this poor old creature spent in a 
rocking-chair, nodding in and out of sleep; and it was 
rather baby Susan, sprawling about the kitchen floor, 
who kept an eye on her, than the reverse. Pearl’s in- 
stallation had changed all that. Bob naturally expected 
any woman he chose to support to work for her board and 
lodging; and it may be that at first Pearl had been too 
grateful for any shelter to risk jeopardizing her good luck 
by shirking. There seems to be no doubt that for a while 
she did her poor utmost to keep house — but the sloven 
in her was too deeply rooted not to flower. 

By the time Susan was six or seven the interior condi- 
tion of Bob ’s house was too crawlingly unpleasant to bear 
exact description ; and even Bob, though callous enough in 
such matters, began to have serious thoughts of giving 
Pearl the slip — not to mention his landlord — and of run- 
ning off with Susan to some other city, where he could 
make a fresh start and perhaps contrive now and then to 
get something decent to eat set before him. It never oc- 
curred to him to give Susan the slip as well — which would 
have freed his hands ; not because he had a soft spot some- 
where for the child, nor because he felt toward her any spe- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


11 


cial sense of moral obligation. Simply, it never occurred to 
him. Susan was his kid; and if he went she went with 
him, along with his pipe, his shop tools, and his set of 
six English razors — his dearest possession, of which he was 
jealously and irascibly proud. 

But, as it happens, Bob never acted upon this slowly 
forming desire to escape ; the desire was quietly checked 
and insensibly receded; and for this Susan herself was 
directly responsible. 

Very early in life she began to supplement Pearl’s feeble 
housewifery, but it was not until her ninth year that 
Susan decided to bring about a domestic revolution. 
Whether or no hatred of dirt be inheritable, I leave to 
biologists, merely thumbnailing two facts for their consid- 
eration: Susan’s mother had hated dirt with an unap- 
peasable hatred; her nightly, after-supper, insensate pur- 
suit of imaginary cobwebs had been one of Bob’s choicest 
grievances against her. And little Susan hated dirt, in 
all its forms, with an almost equal venom, but with a 
brain at once more active and more unreeling. She had 
good reason to hate it. She must either have hated it or 
been subdued to it. For five years, more or less, she had 
lived in the midst of dirt and suffered. It had seemed 
to her one of the inexpugnable evils of existence, like 
mosquitoes, or her father’s temper, or the smell of Pearl’s 
cheap talcum powder when warmed by the fumes of cook- 
ing cabbage. But gradually it came upon her that dirt 
only accumulated in the absence of a will to removal. 

Once her outreaching mind had grasped — without word- 
ily formulating — this physical and moral law, her course 
was plain. Since the will to removal was dormant or miss- 
ing in Pearl, she must supply it. Within the scope of her 
childish strength, she did supply it. Susan insists that it 
took her two years merely to overcome the handicap of 
Pearl’s neglect. Her self-taught technique was faulty; 
proper tools were lacking. There was a bucket which, 
when filled, she could not lift ; a broom that tripped her ; 
high corners she could not reach — corners she had to grow 


12 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


up to, even with the aid of a chair. But in the end she 
triumphed. By the time she was thirteen — she was thirteen 
when I first saw in the Eureka Garage — Bob’s four rooms 
were spotless six and one-half days out of every seven. 

Even Pearl, in her flaccid way, approved the change. 
4 ‘It beats hell,” she remarked affably to Bob one night, 
“how that ugly little monkey likes to scrub things. She’s 
a real help to me, that child is. But no comp’ny. And 
she’s a sight.” 

“Well,” growled Bob, “she comes by that honest. So 
was the old woman.” They were annoyed when Susan, 
sitting by them, for the first time within their memory 
burst into flooding, uncontrollable tears. 

iv 

I should probably, in my own flaccid way, have lost all 
track of Susan, if it had not been for certain ugly things 
that befell in Bob ’s four-room house one breathless evening 
— June twentieth of the year 1907. It is a date stamped 
into my consciousness like a notarial seal. For one thing 
it happened to be my birthday — my thirty-third, which I 
was not precisely celebrating, since it was also the anni- 
versary of the day my wife had left me, two years before. 
Nor was I entirely pleased to have become, suddenly, 
thirty-three. I counted it the threshold of middle-age. 
Now that eleven years have passed, and with them my 
health and the world’s futile pretense at peace, I am 
feeling younger. 

This book is about Susan, but it will be simpler if you 
know something, too, concerning her scribe. Fortunately 
there is not much that it will be needful to tell. 

I was — in those bad, grossly comfortable old days — that 
least happy of Nature’s experiments, a man whose in- 
herited income permitted him to be an idler, and whose 
tastes urged him to write precious little essays about 
precious little for the more precious reviews. My half- 
hearted attempt to practice law I had long abandoned. I 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


13 


lived in a commodious, inherited mansion on Hillhouse 
Avenue — an avenue which in all fairness must be called 
aristocratic, since it has no wrong end to it. It is right at 
both ends, so, naturally, though broad, it is not very long. 
My grandfather, toward the end of a profitably ill-spent 
life, built this mansion of sad-colored stone in a some- 
what mixed Italian style; my father filled it with expen- 
sive and unsightly movables — the spoils of a grand Euro- 
pean tour; and I, in my turn, had emptied it of these 
treasures and refilled it with my own carefully chosen 
collection of rare furniture, rare Oriental carpets, rare 
first editions, and costly 6b jets d’art. This collection I 
then anxiously believed, and do still in part believe, to 
be beautiful — though I am no longer haunted by an earlier 
fear lest the next generation should repudiate my taste 
and reverse my opinion. Let the auction rooms of 1960 
decide. Neither in flesh nor in spirit shall I attend them. 

The tragi-comedy of my luckless marriage I shall not 
stop here to explain, but its rather mysterious ending 
had at first largely cut me off from my old family friends 
and my socially correct acquaintances. When Gertrude 
left me, their sympathies, or their sense of security, went 
with her. I can hardly blame them. There had been no 
glaring scandal, but the fault was inferentially mine. To 
speak quite brutally, I did not altogether regret their loss. 
Too many of them had bored me for too many years. I 
was glad to rely more on the companionship of certain 
writers and painters which my scribbling had quietly 
won for me, here and in France. I traveled about a good 
deal. When at home, I kept my guest rooms filled — often, 
in the horrid phrase, with 11 visitors of distinction.” 

In this way I became a social problem, locally, of some 
magnitude. Visitors of distinction — even when of eccen- 
tric distinction — cannot easily be ignored in a university 
town. Thus it made it a little awkward, perhaps, that I 
should so often prove to be their host ; a little — less, on the 
whole, than one would suppose. Within two years — just 
following Ballou’s brief stay with me, on his way to in- 


14 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


troduce that now forgotten nine-days wonder, Polymor- 
phous Prose, among initiates of the Plymouth Rock Poetry 
Guild, at Boston — my slight remaining ineligibility was 
tacitly and finally ignored. The old family friends began 
to hint that Gertrude, though a splendid woman, had al- 
ways been a little austere. Possibly there were faults on 
both sides. One never knew. 

And it was just at this hour of social reestablishment 
that my birthday swung round again, for the thirty-third 
time, and brought with it a change in my outer life which 
was to lead on to even greater changes in all my modes 
of thinking and feeling. Odd, that a drunken quarrel 
in a four-room house toward the wrong end of Birch 
Street could so affect the destiny of a luxurious dilettante , 
living at the very center of bonded respectability, in a 
mansion of sad-colored stone, on a short broad avenue 
which is right at both ends! 


v 

“ Never in this (obviously outcast) world!” grumbled 
Bob Blake, bringing his malletlike fist down on the mar- 
ble top of the parlor table. 

The blow made his half-filled glass jump and clinkle; 
so he emptied it slowly, then poured in four fingers more, 
forgetting to add water this time, and sullenly pushed 
the bottle across to Pearl. But Pearl was fretful. Her 
watery blue eyes were fixed upon the drumhead of the 
banjo, where it hung suspended above the melodeon. 

“I did so paint them flowers. And well you know it. 
What’s the good of bein’ so mean? If you wasn’t heeled 
you’d let me have it my way. Didn’t I bring that banjo 
with me?” 

“Hungh! Say you did. What does that prove?” 

“I guess it proves somethin’, all right.” 

‘‘Proves you swiped it, likely.” 

“Me! I ain’t that kind, thanks.” 

“The hell you ain’t.” 


15 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

‘‘If you’re tryin’ to get gay, cut it out!” 

“Not me.” 

“Well, then — quit!” 

This was shortly after supper. It was an unusually 
hot, humid evening; doors and windows stood open to no 
purpose; and Susan was sitting out on the monolithic 
door slab, fighting off mosquitoes. She found that this 
defensive warfare partly distracted her from the witless, 
interminable bickering within. Moreover, the striated 
effluvia of whisky, talcum powder, and perspiration had 
made her head feel a little queer. By comparison, the 
fetid breath from the exposed mud banks of the salt marsh 
was almost refreshing. 

Possibly it was because her head did feel a little queer 
that Susan began presently to wonder about things. Be- 
tween her days at the neighboring public school and her 
voluntary rounds of housework, Susan had not of late 
years had much waking time to herself. In younger and 
less crowded hours, before her father had been informed 
by the authorities that he must either send his child to 
school or take the consequences, Susan had put in all 
her spare moments at wondering. She would see a toad 
in the back yard, for example, under a plantain leaf, and 
she would begin to wonder. She would wonder what it felt 
like to be a toad. And before very long something would 
happen to her, inside, and she would be a toad. She would 
have toad thoughts and toad feelings. . . . There would 
stretch above her a dim, green, balancing canopy — the 
plantain leaf. All about her were soaring, translucent 
fronds — the grass. It was cool there under the plantain 
leaf; but she was enormously fat and ugly, her brain 
felt like sooty cobwebs, and nobody loved her. 

Still, she didn’t care much. She could feel her soft 
gray throat, like a blown-into glove finger, pulsing slowly 
— which was almost as soothing a sensation as letting the 
swing die down. It made her feel as if Someone — some 
great unhappy cloudlike Being — were making up a song, 
a song about most everything; chanting it sleepily to him- 


16 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


self — or was it herself? — somewhere; and as if she were 
part of this beautiful, unhappy song. But all the time 
she knew that if that white fluffy restlessness — that moth 
miller — fluttered only a little nearer among those golden- 
green fronds, she knew if it reached the cool rim of her 
plantain shade, she knew, then, that something terrible 
would happen to her — knew that something swift and 
blind, that she couldn’t help, would coil deep within her 
like a spring and so launch her forward, open-jawed. It 
was awful — awful for the moth miller — but she couldn’t 
not do it. She was a toad. . . . 

And it was the same with her father. There were 
things he couldn’t not do. She could be — sitting very 
still in a corner — be her father, when he was angry; and 
she knew he couldn’t help it. It was just a dark slow 
whirling inside, with red sparks flying swiftly out from it. 
And it hurt while it lasted. Being her father like that 
always made her sorry for him. But she wished, and she 
felt he must often wish, that he couldn’t be at all. There 
were lots of live things that would be happier if they 
weren’t live things; and if they weren’t, Susan felt, the 
great cloudlike Being would be less unhappy too. 

Naturally, I am giving you Susan’s later interpreta- 
tions of her pre-schoolday wonderings; and a number of 
you would gasp a little, knowing what firm, delicate im- 
aginings all Susan Blake’s later interpretations were, if 
I should give you her pen name as well — which I have 
promised myself not to do. This is not an official study 
of a young writer of peculiar distinction; it is merely 
an unpretending book about a little girl I knew and a 
young married woman I still know— one and the same 
person. It is what I have named it— that only: The 
Book of Susan. 

Meanwhile, this humid June night — to the sordid ac- 
companiment of Bob and Pearl snarling at each other 
half-drunkenly within— Susan waits for us on the mono- 
lithic door slab ; and there is a new wonder in her dizzy 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 17 

little head. I can’t do better than let her tell you in her 
own words what this new wonder was like. 

“Ambo, dear” — my name, by the way, is Ambrose 
Hunt; Captain Hunt, of the American Red Cross, at 
the present writing, which I could date from a sleepy little 
village in Southern France — “Ambo, dear, it was the 
moon, mostly. There was a pink bud of light in the heat 
mist, way off beyond East Rock, and then the great wild 
rose of the moon opened slowly through it. Papa, inside, 
was sounding just like a dog when he’s bullying another 
dog, walking up on the points of his toes, stiff legged, 
round him. So I tried to escape, tried to be the moon; 
tried to feel floaty and shining and beautiful, and — and 
remote. But I couldn’t manage it. I never could make 
myself be anything not alive. I’ve tried to be stones, but 
it ’s no good. It won ’t work. I can be trees — a little. But 
usually I have to be animals, or men and women — and of 
course they’re animals too. 

“So I began wondering why I liked the moon, why just 
looking at it made me feel happy. It couldn’t talk to 
me ; or love me. All it could do was to be up there, some- 
times, and shine. Then I remembered about mythology. 
Miss Chisholm, in school, was always telling us about gods 
and goddesses. She said we were children, so we could 
recreate the gods for ourselves, because they belonged to 
the child age of the world. She talked like that a lot, in a 
faded-leaf voice, and none of us ever understood her. The 
truth is, Ambo, we never paid any attention to her; she 
smiled too much and too sadly, without meaning it; and 
her eyelashes were white. All the same, that night some- 
how I remembered Artemis, the virgin moon goddess, who 
slipped silently through dark woods at dusk, hunting with 
a silvery bow. Being a virgin seemed to mean that you 
didn’t care much for boys. But I did always like boys 
better than girls, so I decided I could never be a virgin. 
And yet I loved the thought of Artemis from that mo- 
ment. I began to think about her — oh, intensely ! — always 
keeping off by herself; cool, and shining, and — and de- 


18 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


tached. And there was one boy she had cared for; 1 re- 
membered that, too, though I couldn’t remember his name. 
A naked, brown sort of boy, who kept off by himself on 
blue, distant hills. So Artemis wasn’t really a virgin at 
all. She was just — awfully particular. She liked clean, 
open places, and the winds, and clear, swift water. What 
she hated most was stuffiness! That’s why I decided then 
and there, Ambo, that Artemis should be my goddess, my 
own pet goddess; and I made up a prayer to her. I’ve 
never forgotten it. I often say it still. . . . 

Dearest, dearest Far-Away, 

Can you hear me when I pray f 
Can you hear me when 1 cry f 
Would you care if I should die? 

No, you wouldn’t care at all; 

But 1 love you most of all. 

“It isn’t very good, Ambo, but it’s the first rhyme I 
ever made up out of my own head. And I just talked 
it right off to Artemis without any trouble. But I had 

hardly finished it, when ” 

What had happened next was the crash of glassware, 
followed by Bob’s thick voice, bellowing: “C’m ba’ here! 
Damned slut ! Tell yeh t ’ c ’m ba ’ an ’ — an ’ ’pol ’gize ! ’ ’ 
Susan heard a strangling screech from Pearl, the jar 
of a heavy piece of furniture overturned. The child’s 
first impulse was to run out into Birch Street and scream 
for help. She tells me her spine knew all at once that 
something terrible had happened — or was going to hap- 
pen. Then, in an odd flash of hallucination, she saw 
Artemis poised the fleetingest second before her — beauti- 
ful, a little disdainful, divinely unafraid. So Susan 
gulped, dug her nails fiercely into her palms, and hurried 
back through the parlor into the kitchen, where she stum- 
bled across the overturned table and fell, badly bruising 
her cheek. 

As she scrambled to her feet a door slammed to, above. 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


19 


Her father, in a grotesque crouching posture, was mount- 
ing the ladderlike stair. On the floor at the stair’s foot 
lay the parchment head of Pearl’s banjo, which he had cut 
from its frame. Susan distinctly caught the smudged 
pinks and blues of the nondescript flowers. She realized 
at once that her father was bound on no good errand. 
And Pearl was trapped. Susan called to her father, 
daringly, a little wildly. He slued round to her, leaning 
heavily on the stair rail, his face green-white, his lips held 
back by some evil reflex in a fixed, appalling grin. 

It was the face of a madman. ... He raised his right 
hand, slowly, and a tiny prismatic gleam darted from the 
blade of an opened razor — one of his precious set of six. 
Pie had evidently used it to destroy the banjo head, which 
he would never have done in his right mind. But now 
he made a shocking gesture with the blade, significant 
of other uses; then turned, crouching once more, to con- 
tinue upward. Susan tried to cry out, tried to follow him, 
until the room slid from its moorings into a whirlpool of 
humming blackness. . . . 


That is all Susan remembers for some time. It is just 
as well. 


vr 


What Susan next recalls is an intense blare of light, 
rousing her from her nothingness, like trumpets. Her 
immediate confused notion was that the gates of hell had 
been flung wide for her ; and when a tall black figure pres- 
ently cut across the merciless rays and towered before 
her, she thought it must be the devil. But the intense 
blare came from the head lights of my touring car, and 
the tall black devil was I. A greatly puzzled and com- 
passionate devil I was too ! Maltby Phar— that exquisite 
anarchist— was staying with me, and we had run down 
to the shore for dinner, hoping to mitigate the heat by the 
ride, and my new sensation of frustrate middle-age by 
broiled live lobsters. It was past eleven. I had just 


20 


THE BOOK OF S.HSAN 


dropped Maltby at the house and had run my car round 
to the garage where Bob worked, meaning to leave it 
there overnight so Bob could begin patching at it the 
first thing in the morning. It had been bucking its way 
along on three cylinders or less all day. 

Bob’s garage lay back from the street down a narrow 
alley. Judge, then, of my astonishment as I nosed my car 
up to its shut double doors ! There, on the concrete incline 
before the doors, lay a small crumpled figure, half -curled, 
like an unearthed cut-worm, about a shining dinner pail. 
I brought the car to a sudden dead stop. The small figure 
partly uncrumpled, and a white, blinded little face lifted 
toward me. It was Bob’s youngster! What was she up 
to, lying there on the ribbed concrete at this time of night ? 
And in heaven’s name — why the dinner pail? I jumped 
down to investigate. 

“You’re Susan Blake, aren’t you?” 

“Yes” — with a whispered gasp — “your Royal High- 
ness.” 

Susan says she doesn’t know just why she addressed the 
devil in that way, unless she was trying to flatter him 
and so get round him. 

“I’m not so awfully bad,” she went on, “if you don’t 
count thinking things too much ! ’ ’ 

The right cheek of her otherwise delicately modeled 
child’s face was a swollen lump of purple and green. I 
dropped down on one knee beside her. 

“Why, you poor little lady! You’re hurt!” 

Instantly she sprang to her feet, wild-eyed. 

“No, no! It’s not me — it’s Pearl! Oh, quick — please! 
He had a razor!” 

“Razor? Who did?” I seized her hands. “I’m Mr. 
Hunt, dear. Your father often works on my car. Tell 
me what’s wrong!” 

She was still half dazed. “I — I can’t see why I’m down 
here — with papa’s dinner pail. Pearl was upstairs, and 
I tried to stop him from going.” Then she began to 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 21 

whimper like a whipped puppy. ‘‘It’s all mixed. I’m 
scared. * * 

“Of course — of course you are; but it’s going to be all 
right.” I led her to the car and lifted her to the front 
seat. “Hold on a minute, Susan. I’ll be back with you 
in less than no time!” 

I sounded my horn impatiently. After an interval, a 
slow-footed car washer inside the garage began trundling 
the doors back to admit me. I ran to him. 

No. Bob, he left at six, same as usual. He hadn’t 
been round since. ... His kid, eh? Mebbe the heat had 
turned her queer. Nuif to addle most folks, the heat 
was. . . . 

I saw that he knew nothing, and snapped him off with 
a sharp request to crank the car for me. As he did so, 
I jumped in beside Susan. 

“Where do you live, Susan? Oh, yes, of course — Birch 
Street. Bob told me that. . . . Eh? You don’t want to 
go home?” 

“Never, please. Never, never! I won’t!” Proclaim- 
ing this, she flung Bob’s dinner pail from her and it 
bounced and clattered down the asphalt. “It’s too 
late,” she added, in a frightened whisper: “I know it is!” 

Then she seized my arm — thereby almost wrecking us 
against a fire hydrant — and clung to me, sobbing. I 
was puzzled and — yes — alarmed. Bob was a bad cus- 
tomer. The child’s bruised face . . . something she had 

said about a razor ? And instantly I made up my 

mind. 

“I’ll take you to my house, Susan. Mrs. Parrot” — 
Mrs. Parrot was my housekeeper — “will fix you up for 
to-night. Then I’ll go round and see Bob; see what’s 
wrong.” I felt her thin fingers dig into my arm con- 
vulsively. “Yes,” I reassured her, taking a corner peril- 
ously at full speed, “that will be much better. You’ll 
like Mrs. Parrot.” 

Rather recklessly, I hoped this might prove to be true; 
for Mrs. Parrot was a little difficult at times. . . . 


22 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


It was Maltby Phar who saw me coming up the steps 
with a limp child in my arms, and who opened the screen 
door for me. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “Done it this time, 
eh! Always knew you would, sooner or later. You’re 
too damned absent-minded to drive a car. You ” 

“Nonsense!” I struck in. “Tell Mrs. Parrot to ring up 
Doctor Stevens. Then send her to me. ’ ’ And I continued 
on upstairs with Susan. 

When Mrs. Parrot came, Susan was lying with closed 
eyes in the middle of a great white embroidered coverlet, 
upon which her shoes had smeared greasy, permanent- 
looking stains. 

“Mercy,” sighed Mrs. Parrot, “if you’ve killed the 
poor creature, nobody’s sorrier than I am! But why 
couldn’t you have laid her down on the floor? She 
wouldn’t have known.” 

In certain respects Mrs. Parrot was invaluable to me; 
but then and there I suspected that Mrs. Parrot would, 
in the not-too-distant future, have to go. 

Within five minutes Doctor Stevens arrived, and, after 
hurried explanations, Maltby and I left him in charge — 
and then made twenty-five an hour to Birch Street. 

However, Susan’s intuitions had been correct. We 
found Bob’s four-room house quite easily. It was the 
house with the crowd in front of it. ... We were an hour 
too late. 

“Cut her throat clean acrost; and his own after,” 
shrilled Mrs. Perkins to us — Mrs. Perkins, who lived three 
doors nearer the right end of Birch Street. “But it’s only 
what was to be looked for, and I guess it’ll be a lesson 
to some. You can’t expect no better end than that,” 
perorated Mrs. Perkins to. us and her excited neighbors, 
while her small gray-green eyes snapped with electric 
malice, “you can’t expect no better end than that to sech 
brazen immorality!” 

“My God,” groaned Maltby, as we sped away, “How 
they have enjoyed it all! Why, you almost ruined the 
evening for them when you told them you’d found the 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 23 

child! They were hoping to discover her body in the 
cellar or down the well. Ugh ! What a world ! 

“By the way,” he added, as we turned once more 
into the dignified breadth of Hillhouse Avenue, “what’ll 
you do with the homely little brat? Put her in some kind 
of awful institution?” 

The bland tone of his assumption irritated me. I 
ground on the brakes. 

“Certainly not! I like her. If she returns the compli- 
ment, and her relatives don’t claim her, she’ll stay on 
here with me.” 

“Hum. Bravo. . . . About two weeks,” said Maltby 
Phar. 


THE SECOND CHAPTER 


i 

I T was not Susan who left me at the end of two weeks ; 

it was Mrs. Parrot. Maltby had departed within three 
days, hastening perforce to editorial duties in New York. 
He then edited, with much furtive groaning to sympa- 
thetic friends, the Garden Exquisite , a monthly maga- 
zine de luxe, devoted chiefly to advertising matter, and 
to photographs taken — by request of far-seeing wives and 
daughters — at the country clubs and on the country es- 
tates of our minor millionaires. For a philosophical an- 
arch, rather a quaint occupation! Yet one must live. . . . 
Maltby, however, had threatened a return as soon as possi- 
ble, “to look over the piteous debacle.” There was no 
probability that Mrs. Parrot would ever return. 

“You cannot expect me,” maintained Mrs. Parrot, “to 
wait on the child of a murdering suicide. Especially, ’ ’ she 
added, “when he was nothing but a common sort of man 
to begin with. Pm as sorry for that poor little creature 
as anybody in New Haven; but there are places for such.” 

That was her ultimatum. My reply was two weeks’ 
notice, and a considerable monetary gift to soften the 
blow. 

Hillhouse Avenue, in general, so far as I could dis- 
cover, rather sympathized with Mrs. Parrot. She at once 
obtained an excellent post, becoming housekeeper for the 
Misses Carstairs, spinster sisters of incredible age, who 
lived only two doors from me in a respectable mansion 
whose portico resembled an Egyptian tomb. Wandering 
freshmen from the Yale campus frequently mistook it for 
the home office of one of the stealthier secret societies. 

24 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


25 


There, silently ensconced, Mrs. Parrot burned with a 
hard, gemlike flame, and awaited my final downfall. So 
did the Misses Carstairs, who, being cousins of my wife, 
had remained firmly in opposition. And rumor had it 
that other members of neighboring families were suffering 
discomfort from the proximity of Susan. It was as if 
a tiny, almost negligible speck of coal dust had blown 
into the calm, watchful eye of the genius loci , and was 
gradually inflaming it — with resultant nervous irritation 
to all its members. 

Susan was happily unconscious of these things. Her 
gift of intuition had not yet projected itself into that 
ethereal region which conserves the more tenuous tone and 
the subtler distinction — denominate 4 ‘society.” For the 
immediate moment she was bounded in a nutshell, yet 
seemed to count herself a princess of infinite space — yes, 
in spite of bad dreams. We — Doctor Stevens and I — had 
put her to bed in the large, coolly distinguished corner 
room formerly occupied by Gertrude. This room opened 
directly into my own. Doctor Stevens counselled bed for 
a few days, and Susan seemed well content to obey his 
mandate. Meanwhile, I had requested Mrs. Parrot to buy 
various necessities for her — toothbrushes, nightdresses, day 
dresses, petticoats, and so on. Mrs. Parrot had supposed I 
should want the toilet articles inexpensive, and the cloth- 
ing plain but good. 

4 ‘Good, by all means, Mrs. Parrot/ ’ I had corrected, 
“but not plain. As pretty and frilly as possible !” 

Mrs. Parrot had been inclined to argue the matter. 

“When that poor little creature goes from here/ , she 
had maintained, “flimsy, fussy things will be of no ser- 
vice to her. None. She’ll need coarse, substantial articles 
that will bear usage.” 

“Do you like to wear coarse, substantial articles, Mrs. 
Parrot?” I had mildly asked. “So far as I am permit- 
ted to observe ” 

Mrs. Parrot had resented the implication. “I hope in 
my outer person, Mr. Hunt, that I show a decent respect 


26 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


for my employers, but I’ve never been one to pamper 
myself on linjery, if I may use the word — not believing 
it wholesome. Nor to discuss it with gentlemen. But 
if I don’t know what it’s wisest and best to buy in this 
case, who,” she had demanded of heaven, “does?” 

“Possibly,” heaven not replying, had been my response, 
“7 do. At any rate, I can try.” 

It was fun trying. I ran down on the eight o’clock 
to New York and strolled up and down Fifth Avenue, 
shopping here and there as the fancy moved me. Shop- 
ping — with a well-filled pocketbook — is not a difficult art. 
Women exaggerate its difficulties for their own malign 
purposes. In two hours of the most casual activity I had 
bought a great number of delightful things — for my little 
daughter, you know. Her age? . . . Oh, well — I should 
think about fourteen. Let’s call it 'going on fourteen.’ 
Then it’s sure to be all right.” 

It was all right — essentially. By which I mean that the 
parties of the first and second parts— to wit, Susan and 
I — were entirely and blissfully satisfied. 

Susan liked particularly a lacy sort of nightgown all 
knotted over with little pink ribbony rosebuds; there was 
a coquettish boudoir cap to match it — suggestive some- 
how of the caps village maidens used to wear in old-fash- 
ioned comic operas; and a pink silk kimono embroidered 
with white chrysanthemums, to top off the general effect. 
Needless to say, Mrs. Parrot disapproved of the general 
effect, deeming it, no doubt with some reason, a thought 
flamboyant for Gertrude’s coolly distinguished corner 
room. 

But Susan, propped straight up by now against pillows, 
wantoned in this finery. She would stroke the pink silk 
of the kimono with her thin, sensitive fingers, sigh deeply, 
happily, then close her eyes. 

There was nothing much wrong with her. The green- 
and-purple bruise on her cheek — a somber note which 
would not harmonize with the frivolity of the boudoir 
cap — was no longer painful. But, as Doctor Stevens put 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 27 

it, * 'The little monkey’s all in.” She was tired, tired out 
to the last tiny filament of her tiniest nerve. . . . 

During those first days with me she asked no awkward 
questions ; and few of any kind. Indeed, she rarely spoke 
at all, except with her always-speaking black eyes. For 
the time being the restless-terrier-look had gone from 
them; they were quiet and deep, and said “Thank you,” 
to Doctor Stevens, to Mrs. Parrot, to me, with a hundred 
modulating shades of expression. In spite of a clear- 
white, finely drawn face, against which the purple bruise 
stood out in shocking relief; in spite of entirely straight 
but gossamery black hair; in spite of a rather short nose 
and a rather wide mouth — there was a fascination about 
the child which no one, not even the hostile Mrs. Parrot, 
wholly escaped. 

“That poor, peeny little creature,” admitted Mrs. Par- 
rot, on the very morning she left me, “has a way of look- 
ing at you — so you can’t talk to her like you’d ought to. 
It’s somebody’s duty to speak to her in a Christian spirit. 
She never says her prayers. Nor mentions her father. 
And don’t seem to care what’s happened to him, or why 
she’s here, or what’s to come to her. And what is to 
come to her,” demanded Mrs. Parrot, “if she stays on in 
this house, without a God-fearing woman, and one you 
can’t fool most days? Not that I could be persuaded, 
having made other arrangements. And if I may say a 
last word, the wild talk I’ve heard here isn’t what I’ve 
been used to. Nor to be approved of. No vulgarity. 
None. I don’t accuse. But free with matters better left 
to the church ; or in the dark — where they belong. All 
I hold is, that some things are sacred, and some unmen- 
tionable ; and conversation should take cognizance of 
such ! ’ ’ 

I had never known her so moved or so eloquent. I 
strove to reassure her. 

“You are quite right, Mrs. Parrot. I apologize for any 
painful moments my friends and I have given you. But 
don’t worry too much about Susan. So far as Susan’s 


28 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

concerned, I promise to ‘take cognizance ’ in every possi- 
ble direction.’ ’ 

It was clear to me that I should have to expend a good 
deal of care upon engaging another housekeeper at once. 
And, of course, a governess — for lessons and things. And 
a maid? Yes; Susan would need a maid, if only to do her 
mending. Obviously, neither the housekeeper, the gover- 
ness, nor I could be expected to take cognizance of that. 

n 

But I anticipate. Two weeks before Mrs. Parrot’s 
peroration, on the very evening of the day Maltby Phar 
had left me, Susan and I had had our first good talk to- 
gether. My memorable shopping tour had not yet come 
off, and Susan, having pecked birdlike at a very light 
supper, was resting — semi-recumbent — in bed, clothed in a 
suit of canary-yellow pajamas, two sizes too big for her, 
which I was rather shaken to discover belonged to Nora, 
my quiet little Irish parlor maid. I had not supposed that 
Nora indulged in night gear filched from musical comedy. 
However, Nora had meant to be kind in a good cause; 
though canary yellow is emphatically a color for the 
flushed and buxom and should never be selected for peeny, 
anemic little girls. It did make Susan look middling 
ghastly, as if quarantined from all access to Hygeia, the 
goddess! Perhaps that is why, when I perched beside 
her on the edge of Gertrude’s colonial four-poster, I felt 
an unaccustomed prickling sensation back of my eyes. 

“How goes it, canary bird?” I asked, taking the thin, 
blue-threaded hand that lay nearest to me. 

Susan’s fingers at once curled trustfully to mine, and 
there came something very like a momentary glimmer of 
mischief into her dark eyes. 

“If I was an honest-to-God canary, I could sing to 
you,” said Susan. “I’d like to do something for you, 
Mr. Hunt. Something you’d like, I mean.” 

“Well, you can, dear. You can stop calling me ‘Mr. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


29 


Hunt 1 ! My first name’s pretty awkward, though. It’s 
Ambrose.” 

For an instant Susan considered my first name, criti- 
cally, then very slowly shook her head. “ It’s a nice name. 
It’s too nice, isn’t it — for every day?” 

I laughed. “But it’s all I have, Susan. What shall 
we do about it?” 

Then Susan laughed, too; it was the first time I had 
heard her laugh. ‘ ‘ I guess your mother was feeling 
kind of stuck up when she called you that!” 

“Most mothers do feel kind of stuck up over their first 
babies, Susan.” 

She considered this, and nodded assent. “But it’s silly 
of them, anyway,” she announced. “There are so many 
babies all the time, everywhere. There’s nothing new 
about babies, Ambo.” 

“Aha!” I exclaimed. “You knew from the first how 
to chasten my stuck-up name, didn’t you? ‘Ambo’ is a 
delightful improvement. ’ ’ 

“It’s more like you,” said Susan, tightening her fingers 
briefly on mine. 

And presently she closed her eyes. When, after a long 
still interval, she opened them, they were cypress-shaded 
pools. 

“Tell me what happened, Ambo.” 

“He’s dead, Susan. Pearl’s dead, too.” 

She closed her eyes again, and two big tears slipped out 
from between her lids, wetting her thick eyelashes and 
staining her bruised and her pallid cheek. 

“He couldn’t help it. He was made like that, inside. 
He was no damn good, Ambo. That’s what he was always 
saying to Pearl — ‘You’re no damn good.’ She wasn’t, 
either. And he wasn’t, much. I guess it’s better for him 
and Pearl to be dead.” 

This — and the two big tears — was her good-by to Bob, 
to Pearl, to the four-room house; her good-by to Birch 
Street. It shocked me at the time. I released her hand 
and stood up to light a cigarette — staring the while at 


30 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Susan. Where had she found her precocious brains? 
And had she no heart? Had something of Bob's granitic 
harshness entered into this uncanny, this unnatural child ? 
Should I live to regret my decision to care for her. to edu- 
cate her? When I died, would she say — to whom? — “I 
guess it's better for him to be dead. Poor Ambo! He 
was no damn good.” 

But even as I shuddered, I smiled. For, after all, she 
was right; the child was right. She had merely uttered, 
truthfully, thoughts which a more conventional mind, 
more conventionally disciplined, would have known how to 
conceal — yes, to conceal even from itself. Genius was 
very like that. 

4 ‘Susan!” I suddenly demanded. “Have you any rela- 
tives who will try to claim you?” 

“Claim me?” 

“Yes. Want to take care of you?” 

“Mamma's sister-in-law lives in Hoboken,” said Susan. 
“But she's a widow; and she’s got seven already.” 

“Would you like to stay here with me?” 

For all answer she flopped sidelong down from the pil- 
lows and hid her bruised face in the counterpane. Her 
slight, canary-clad shoulders were shaken with stifled 
weeping. 

“That settles it!” I affirmed. “I’ll see my lawyer in 
the morning, and he’ll get the court to appoint me your 
guardian. Come now ! If you cry about it, I '11 think you 
don 't want me for guardian. Do you ? ' ’ 

She turned a blubbered, wistful face toward me from 
the counterpane. Her eyes answered me. I leaned over, 
smoothed a pillow and slipped it beneath her tired head, 
then kissed her unbruised cheek and walked quietly back 
into my own room — where I rang for Mrs. Parrot. 

When she arrived, “Mrs. Parrot,” I suggested, “please 
make Susan comfortable for the night, will you ? And I 'll 
appreciate it if you treat her exactly as you would mv own 
child.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 31 

It took Mrs. Parrot at least a minute to hit upon some- 
thing she quite dared to leave with me. 

“Very well, Mr. Hunt. Not having an own child, and 
not knowing — you can say that. Not that it’s the same 
thing, though you do say it! But I’ll make her com- 
fortable — and time tells. In darker days, I hope you’ll be 
able to say that poor, peeny little creature has done the 
same by you.” 

“Thank you, Mrs. Parrot. Good-night.” 

“A good night to you, Mr. Hunt,” elaborated Mrs. Par- 
rot, not without malice; “many of them, Mr. Hunt; many 
of them, I’m sure.” 

m 

By the time Mrs. Parrot left us, housekeeper, governess, 
and maid had been obtained in New York through agencies 
of the highest respectability. 

Miss Goucher, the housekeeper, proved to be a tall, 
big-framed spinster, rising fifty ; a capable, taciturn 
woman with a positive talent for minding her own affairs. 
She had bleak, light-gray eyes, a rudderlike nose, and a 
harsh, positive way of speech that was less disagreeable 
than it might have been, because she so seldom spoke at 
all. Having hoped for a more amiable presence, I was 
of two minds over keeping her ; but she took charge of my 
house so promptly and efficiently, and effaced herself so 
thoroughly — a difficult feat for so definite a figure — that 
in the end there was nothing I could complain of; and so 
she stayed. 

Miss Disbrow on the other hand, who came as gover 
ness, was all that I had dared to wish for; a graceful, 
light-footed, soft-voiced girl — she was not yet thirty — 
with charming manners, a fluent command of the purest 
convent-taught French, a nice touch on the piano, and ap- 
parently some slight acquaintance with the solider 
branches. Merely to associate with Miss Disbrow would, 
I felt, do much for Susan. 

I was less certain about Sonia, the maid. I had asked 


32 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


for a middle-aged English maid. Sonia was Russian, and 
she was only twenty-three. But she was sent directly to 
me from service with Countess Dimbrovitski — formerly, as 
you know, Maud Hochstetter, of Omaha — and brought 
with her a most glowing reference for skill, honesty, and 
unfailing tact. Countess Dimbrovitski did not explain in 
the reference, dated from Newport, why she had permitted 
this paragon to slip from her; nor did it occur to me to 
investigate the point. But Sonia later explained it all, in 
intimate detail, to Susan — as we shall see. 

I had feared that Susan might be at first a little be- 
wildered by the attentions of Sonia and of Miss Disbrow; 
so I explained the unusual situation to Miss Goucher and 
Miss Disbrow — with certain reservations — and asked them 
to make it clear to Sonia. Miss Goucher merely nodded, 
curtly enough, and said she understood. Miss Disbrow 
proved more curious and more voluble. 

“How wonderful of you, Mr. Hunt! ,, she exclaimed. 
“To take in a poor little waif and do all this for her! 
Personally, I count it a privilege to be allowed some share, 
in so generous an action. Oh, but I do — I do. One likes 
to feel, even when forced to work for one’s living, that 
one has some little opportunity to do good in the world. 
Life isn’t,” asked Miss Disbrow, “all money-grubbing and 
selfishness, is it?” And as I found no ready answer, she 
concluded: “But I need hardly ask that of you!” 

For the fleetingest second I found myself wondering 
whether Miss Disbrow, deep down in her hidden heart, 
might not be a minx. Yet her glance, the happiest mix- 
ture of frankness, timidity, and respectful admiration, dis- 
armed me. I dismissed the unworthy suspicion as absurd. 

I was a little troubled, though, when Susan that same 
evening after dinner came to me in the library and seated 
herself on a low stool facing my easy-chair. 

“Ambo,” she said, “I’ve been blind as blind, 
haven’t I?” 

“Have you?” I responded. “For a blind girl, it’s won- 
derful how you find your way about ! ’ ’ 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


33 


“But I’m not joking— and that’s just it,” said Susan. 

‘ ‘ What ’s wrong, dear ? ” I asked. “I see something is. ’ ’ 

“Yes. I am. The wrongest possible. I’ve just dumped 
myself on you, and stayed here; and — and I’ve no damn 
business here at all!” 

“I thought we were going to forget the damns and 
hells, Susan?” 

“We are,” said Susan, coloring sharply and looking 
as if she wanted to cry. “But when you’ve heard them, 
and worse, every minute all your life — it’s pretty hard to 
forget. You must scold me more!” Then with a swift 
movement she leaned forward and laid her cheek on my 
knee. “You’re too good to me, Ambo. I oughtn’t to be 
here — wearing wonderful dresses, having a maid to do my 
hair and — and polish me and button me and mend me. 
I wasn’t meant to have an easy time; I wasn’t born for 
it. First thing you know, Ambo, I ’ll get to thinking I was 
— and be mean to you somehow !” 

“I’ll risk that, Susan.” 

“Yes, but I oughtn’t to let you. I could learn to be 
somebody ’s maid like Sonia ; and if I study hard — and I ’m 
going to ! — some day I could be a governess like Miss Dis- 
brow ; only really know things, not just pretend. Or when 
I’m old enough, a housekeeper like Miss Goucher! That’s 
what you should make me do — work for you ! I can clean 
things better than Nora now; I never skip underneaths. 
Truly, Ambo, it’s all wrong, my having people work for 
me — at your expense. I know it is! Miss Disbrow made 
it all clear as clear, right away.” 

“What! Has Miss Disbrow been stuffing this nonsense 
into your head ! ” I was furious. 

“Oh, not in words!” cried Susan. “She talks just the 
other way. She keeps telling me how fortunate I am to 
have a guardian like you, and how I must be so careful 
never to annoy you or make you regret what you’ve done 
for me. Then she sighs and says life is very hard and 
unjust to many girls born with more advantages. Of 
course she means herself, Ambo. You see, she hates having 


34 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


to work at all. She’s much nicer to look at and talk to, 
but she reminds me of Pearl. She’s no damn — she’s no 
good, Ambo dear. She’s hard where she ought to be soft, 
and soft where she ought to be hard. She tries to get 
round people, so she can coax things out of them. But 
she’ll never get round Miss Goucher, Ambo — or me.” 
And Susan hesitated, lifting her head from my knee and 
looking up at me doubtfully, only to add, “ I — I’m not so 
sure about you.” 

“Indeed. You think, possibly, Miss Disbrow might get 
round me, eh?” 

“Well, she might — if I wasn’t here,” said Susan. “She 
might marry you. ’ ’ 

My explosion of laughter — I am ordinarily a quiet per- 
son — startled Susan. “Have I said something awful 
again ? ’ ’ she cried. 

“Dreadful!” I sputtered, wiping my eyes. “Why, you 
little goose! Don’t you see how I need you? To plumb 
the depths for me — to protect me? I thought I was your 
guardian, Susan; but that’s just my mannish complacency. 
I’m not your guardian at all, dear. You’re mine.” 

But I saw at once that my mirth had confused her, had 
hurt her feelings. ... I reached out for her hands and 
drew her upon my knees. 

“Susan,” I said, “Miss Disbrow couldn’t marry me 
even if she got round me, and wanted to. You see, I have 
a wife already.” 

Susan stared at me with wide, frightened eyes. “You 
have, Ambo? Where is she?” 

“She left me two years ago.” 

“Left you?” It was evident that she did not under- 
stand. “Oh — what will she say when she comes home and 
finds me here? She won’t like it; she won’t like me!” 
wailed Susan. “I know she won’t.” 

“Hush, dear. She’s not coming home again. She made 
up her mind that she couldn’t live with me any more.” 

“What’s her name?” 

“Gertrude.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


35 


‘'Why couldn't she live with you, Ambo?" 

“She said I was cruel to her." 

“Weren’t you good to her, Ambo? Why? Didn't you 
like her?" 

The rapid questions were so unexpected, so searching, 
that I gasped. And my first impulse was to lie to Susan, 
to put her off with a few conventional phrases — phrases 
that would lead the child to suppose me a wronged, lonely, 
broken-hearted man. This would win me a sympathy I 
had not quite realized that I craved. But Susan’s eyes 
were merciless, and I couldn't manage it. Instead, I sur- 
prised myself by blurting out: “That's about it, Susan. 
I didn't like her — enough. We couldn’t hit it off, some- 
how. I'm afraid I wasn't very kind." 

Instantly Susan's thin arms went about my neck, and 
her cheek was pressed tight to mine. 

“Poor Ambo!" she whispered. “I'm so sorry you 
weren't kind. It must hurt you so." Then she jumped 
from my knees. 

“Ambo!" she demanded. “Is my room — her room? 
Is it?"' 

“Certainly not. It isn’t hets any more. She's never 
coming back, I tell you. She put me out of her life once 
for all ; and God knows I 've put her out of mine ! ' ' 

“If you can't let me have another room, Ambo — I’ll 
have to go." 

“Why? Hang it all, Susan, don’t be silly! Don’t make 
difficulties where none exist! What an odd, overstrained 
child you are ! " I was a little annoyed. 

“Yes," nodded Susan gravely, “I see now why Ger- 
trude left you. But she must be awfully stupid not to 
know it's only your outside that's made like that!" 

Next morning, without a permissive word from me, 
Susan had Miss Goucher move all her things to a small 
bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. 
This silent flitting irritated me not a little, and that after- 
noon I had a frank little talk with Miss Disbrow — franker, 
perhaps, than I had intended. Miss Disbrow at once gave 


36 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


me notice, and left for New York within two hours, letting 
it be known that she expected her trunks to be sent 
after her. 

“Gutter-snipes are not my specialty/' was her parting 

word. 

IV 

There proved to be little difficulty in getting myself 
appointed Susan’s guardian. No one else wanted the 
child. 

I promised the court to do my best for her; to treat 
her, in fact, as I would my own flesh and blood. It might 
well be, I said, that before long I should legally adopt 
her. In any event, if this for some unforeseen reason 
proved inadvisable, I assured the court that Susan’s fu- 
ture would be provided for. The court benignly replied 
that, as it stood, I was acting very handsomely in the 
matter; very handsomely; no doubt about it. But there 
was a dim glimmer behind the juridic spectacles that 
seemed to imply : * ‘ Handsomely, my dear sir, but whether 
wisely or no is another question, which, as the official 
champion of widows and orphans, I am not called upon 
to decide.” 

It was with a new sense of responsibility that I opened 
an account in Susan ’s name with a local savings bank, and 
a week later added a short but efficient codicil to my will. 

In the meantime — but with alert suspicions — I inter- 
viewed several highly recommended applicants for Miss 
Disbrow’s deserted post; only to find them wanting. 
Poor things! Combined, they could hardly have met all 
the requirements, aesthetic and intellectual, which I had 
now set my heart upon finding in one lone governess for 
Susan! It would have needed, by this, a subtly modern- 
ized Hypatia to fulfill my ideal. 

I might, of course, have waited for October to send 
Susan to a select private school in the vicinage, patron- 
ized by the little daughters of our more cautious families. 
It was, by neighborly consent, an excellent school, where 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


37 


carefully sterilized cultures — physical, moral, mental, and 
social — were painlessly injected into the blue blood 
streams of our very nicest young girls. I say that I might 
have done so, but this is a euphemism. On the one hand, 
I shrank from exposing Susan to possible snubs; on the 
other, a little bird whispered that Miss Garnett, principal 
of the school, would not care to expose her carefully ster- 
ilized cultures to an alien contagion. Bearers of con- 
tagion — whether physical, moral, mental, or social — were 
not sympathetic to Miss Garnett’s clientele . In Mrs. Par- 
rot’s iron phrase, there are places for such. 

Public schools, to wit! But in those long-past days — 
before Susan taught me that there are just two kinds of 
persons, big and little; those you can do nothing for, be- 
cause they can do nothing for themselves, and those you 
can do nothing for, because they can do everything for 
themselves — in those days, I admit that I had my own 
finicky fears. Public schools were all very well for the 
children of men who could afford nothing better. They 
had, for example, given Bob Blake’s daughter a pretty 
fair preliminary training; but they would never do for 
Ambrose Hunt’s ward. Noblesse — or, at any rate, largesse 
— oblige. 

Yet here was a quandary: Public schools, in my estima- 
tion, being too vulgar for Susan; and Susan, in the esti- 
mation of Hillhouse Avenue, being too vulgar for private 
ones; yea, and though I still took cognizance, no subtfy 
modernized Hypatia coming to me highly recommended 
for a job — how in the name of useless prosperity was I to 
get poor little Susan properly educated at all! 

It was Susan who solved this difficulty for me, as she 
was destined to solve most of my future difficulties, and 
all of her own. 

She soon turned the public world about her into an 
extra-select, super-private school. She impressed all who 
came into contact with her, and made of them her de- 
voted — if often unconscious — instructors. And she be- 
gan by impressing Miss Goucher and Nora and Sonia, 


38 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and Philip Farmer, assistant professor of philosophy in 
Yale University; and Maltby Phar, anarchist editor of 
The Garden Exquisite; and — first and chiefly — me. 

The case of Phil Farmer was typical. Phil and I had 
been classmates in the dark backward and abysm, and we 
were still, in a manner of speaking, friends. I mean that, 
though we had few tastes in common, we kept on liking 
each other a good deal. Phil was a gentle-hearted, stiff- 
headed sort of man, with a conscience — formed for him 
and handed on by a long line of Unitarian ministers — 
a conscience which drove him to incredible labor at alti- 
tudes few of us attain, and where even Phil, it seemed to 
me, found breathing difficult. Not having been thrown 
with much feminine society on his chosen heights, he had 
remained a bachelor. The Metaphysical Mountains are 
said to be infested with women, but they cluster, I am 
told, below the snow line. Phil did not even meet them 
by climbing through them; he always ballooned straight 
up for the Unmelting; and when he occasionally dropped 
down, his psychic chill seldom wore entirely off before 
he was ready to ascend again. This protected him; for 
he was a tall, dark-haired fellow whose features had the 
clear-cut gravity of an Indian chieftain ; his rare, friendly 
smile was a delight. So he would hardly otherwise have 
escaped. 

Perhaps once a week it was his habit to drop in after 
dinner and share with me three or four pipes’ worth of 
desultory conversation. We seldom talked shop; since 
mine did not interest him, nor his me. Mostly we just 
ambled aimlessly round the outskirts of some chance 
neutral topic — who would win the big game, for exam- 
ple. It amused neither of us, but it rested us both. 

One night, perhaps a month after Susan had come to 
me, I returned late from a hot day’s trip to New York 
— one more unsuccessful quest after Hypatia Rediviva — 
and found Phil and Susan sitting together on the screened 
terrace at the back of my house, overlooking the garden. 
It was not my custom to spend the muggy midsummer 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


39 


months in town, but this year I had been unwilling to 
leave until I could capture and carry off Hypatia Rediviva 
with me. Moreover, I did not know where to go. The cot- 
tage at Watch Hill belonged to Gertrude, and was in con- 
sequence no longer used by either of us. As a grass 
widower I had, in summer, just travelled about. Now, 
with a ward of fourteen to care for, just travelling about 
no longer seemed the easiest solution; yet I hated camps 
and summer hotels. I should have to rent a place some- 
where, that was certain; but where? With the world to 
choose from, a choice proved difficult. I was marking 
time. 

My stuffy fruitless trip had decided me to mark time 
no longer. Hypatia or no Hypatia, Susan must be taken 
to the hills or the sea. It was this thought that simmered 
in my brain as I strolled out to the garden terrace and 
overheard Susan say to Phil: “But I think it’s much 
easier to believe in the devil than it is in God! Don’t 
you? The devil isn’t all- wise, all-good, all-everything ! 
He’s a lot more like us 

I stopped short and shamelessly listened. 

“That’s an interesting concept,” responded Phil, with 
his slow, friendly gravity. “You mean, I suppose, that 
if we must be anthropomorphic, we ought at least to be 
consistent. ’ ’ 

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Susan, “if I did mean 
that without knowing it?” There was no flippancy, no 
irony in her tone. “ ‘ An-thro-po-mor^-phic . . .’ ” she 
added, savoring its long-drawn-outness. Susan never 
missed a strange word ; she always pounced on it at once, 
unerringly, and made it hers. 

“That’s a Greek word,” explained Phil. 

“It’s a good word,” said Susan, “if it has a tremen- 
dous lot packed up in it. If it hasn’t, it’s much too long.” 

“I agree with you,” said Phil; “but it has.” 

“What?” asked Susan. 

“It would take me an hour to tell you.” 


40 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“Oh, I’m glad!” cried Susan. “It must be a wonder- 
ful word! Please go on till Ambo comes!” 

I decided to take a bath, and tiptoed softly and un- 
detected away. 

v 

After that evening Phil began to drop in every two 
or three nights, and he did not hesitate to tell me that 
the increasing frequency of his visits was due to his pro- 
gressive interest in Susan. 

“She’s a curious child,” he explained; which was true 
in any sense you chose to take it, and all the way back 
to the Latin curiosus, 1 ‘ careful, diligent, thoughtful ; from 
cura, care,” and so on. . . . 

“I’ve never seen much of children,” Phil continued; 
“never had many chances, as it happens. My sister has 
three boys, but she’s married to a narrow-gauge mission- 
ary, and lives — to call it that — in Ping Lung, or some such 
place. I’ve the right address somewhere, I think — in a 
notebook. Bertha sends me snapshots of the boys from 
time to time, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt lonely because 
of their exile. Funny. Perhaps it’s because I never 
liked Bertha much. Bertha has a sloppy mind — you know, 
with chance scraps of things floating round in it. Noth- 
ing coheres. But you take this youngster of yours, now 
— I call her yours ” 

“Do!” I interjected. 

“Well, there’s the opposite extreme! Susan links every- 
thing up, everything she gets hold of — facts, fancies, guesses, 
feelings ; the whole psychic menagerie. Chains them all to- 
gether somehow, and seems to think they’ll get on com- 
fortably in the same tent. Of course they won’t — can’t — 
and that’s the danger for her! But she’s stimulating, 
Hunt” — Phil always called me Hunt, as if just failing 
whole-heartedly to accept me — “she’s positively stimulat- 
ing! A mind like that must be trained; thoroughly, I 
mean. We must do our best for her.” 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 41 

The “we” amused me and — yes, I confess it — nettled 
me a little. 

“Don’t worry about that,” I said, and more dryly than 
I had meant to; “I’m combing the country now for a 
suitable governess.” 

“Governess!” Phil snorted. “You don’t want a gover- 
ness for Susan. You want, for this job,” he insisted, “a 
male intellect — a vigorous, disciplined male intellect. 
Music, dancing, water colors — pshaw! Deportment — how 
to enter a drawing-room! Fiddle-faddle! How to enter 
the Kingdom of God! That’s more Susan’s style,” cried 
Phil, with a most unaccustomed heat. 

I laughed at him. 

“Are you willing to take her on, Phil?” I asked. “I 
believe it’s been done; Epicurus had a female pupil or 
two.” 

“I have taken her on,” Phil replied, quite without re- 
sentment. “Hadn’t you noticed it?” 

“Yes,” I said; “only, it’s the other way round.” 

“I’ve been appropriated, is that it?” 

“Yes; by Susan. We all have, Phil. That vampire 
child is simply draining us, my dear fellow.” 

“All right,” said Phil, after a second’s pause, “if she’s 
a spiritual vampire, so much the better. Only, she’ll need 
a firm hand. We must give her suck at regular hours; 
draw up a plan. You can tackle the languages, if you 
like — aesthetics, and all that. I’ll pin her down to math 
and logic — teach her to think straight. We can safely 
leave her to pick up history and sociology and such things 
for herself. You’ve a middling good library, and she’ll 
browse. ’ ’ 

“Oh, she’ll browse! She’s browsing now.” 

“Poetry?” demanded Phil, suspicion in his tone, 
anxiety in his eyes. “If she runs amuck with poetry 
too soon, there’s no hope for her. She’ll get to taking 
sensations for ideas, and that’s fatal. A mind like 
Susan ’s ” 


42 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


What further he said I missed- a distant tinkle from 
the front-door bell had distracted me. 

It was Maltby Phar. He came out to us on the garden 
terrace, unexpected and unannounced. 

“Whether you like it or not,” he sighed luxuriously, 
“I’m here for a week. How’s the great experiment — eh? 
Am I too late for the bust-up ? ’ ’ Then he nodded to Phil. 
“How are you, Mr. Farmer? Delighted to meet an old 
adversary! Shall it be swords or pistols this time? Or 
clubs? But I warn you, I’m no fit foe; I’m soft. Mak- 
ing up our mammoth Christmas Number in July always 
unnerves me. By the time I had looked over a dozen de- 
signs for our cover this morning and found Gaspar, Mel- 
chior, and Balthazar in every one of them, mounted on 
fancy camels, and heading for an exaggerated star in the 
right upper dark-blue corner, I succumbed to heat and 
profanity, turned ’em all face downward, shuffled ’em, 
grabbed one at random, and then fled for solace! Solace,” 
he added, dropping into a wicker armchair, “can begin, 
if you like, by taking a cool, mellow, liquid form.” 

I rang. 

Phil, I saw, was looking annoyed. He disliked Maltby 
Phar, openly disliked him; so I felt certain — I was per- 
haps rather hoping — that he would take this opportunity 
to escape. With Phil I was never then entirely at ease; 
but in those days I was wholly so with Maltby. Miss 
Goucher answered my summons in person, and I sug- 
gested a sauterne cup for my friends. Phil frowned on 
the suggestion, but Maltby beamed. The ayes had it, 
and Miss Goucher, who had remained neutral, withdrew. 
It was Phil’s chance; yet he surprised me by settling back 
and refilling his pipe. 

“When you came, Mr. Phar,” he said, his tone with- 
drawing toward formality, “we were discussing the edu- 
cation of Susan.” 

“Then I came just in time!” cried Maltby. 

“For what?” I queried. 

“I may prevent a catastrophe. If you’re really going 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


43 


to see this thing through, Boz”— his name for me — “for 
God’s sake do a little clear thinking first! Don’t drift. 
Don’t flounder. Don’t wallow. Scrap all your musty, in- 
bred prejudices once for all, and see that at least one kid on 
this filthy old planet gets a plain, honest, unsentimental- 
ized account of what she is and what the world is. If you 
can bring yourself to do that, Susan will be unique. She 
will be the first educated woman in America.” 

“ ‘What she is and what the world is,’ ” repeated Phil, 
slowly. “What is the world, may I ask? And what is 
Susan ? ’ ’ 

There was a felt tenseness in the moment; the hush be- 
fore battle. We leaned forward a little from our easy- 
chairs, and no one of us noticed that Susan had slipped 
noiselessly to the window seat by the opened library win- 
dow which gave upon the terrace. But there, as we later 
discovered, she was ; and there, for the present silently, she 
remained. 

“The world,” began Maltby Phar sententiously, “is a 
pigsty.” 

“Very well,” interrupted Phil; “I’ll grant you that to 
start with. What follows?” 

“What we see about us,” said Maltby. 

“And what do we see?” asked Phil. 

At this inopportune moment Miss Goucher reappeared, 
bearing a Sheffield tray, on which stood three antique 
Venetian goblets, and a tall pitcher of rare Bohemian 
glass, filled to the brim with an iced sauterne cup gar- 
nished with fresh strawberries and thin disks of pineapple. 
Nothing less suggestive of the conventional back-lot pig- 
gery could have been imagined. By the time a table had 
been placed, our goblets filled, and Miss Goucher had re- 
tired, Maltby had decided to try for a new opening. 

“Excellent!” he resumed, having drained and refilled 
his goblet. ‘ ‘ Now, Mr. Farmer, if you really wish to know 
what the world is, and what Susan is, I am ready. Have 
with you! And by the way, Boz,” he interjected, sipping 
his wine, “your new housekeeper is one in a thousand. 


44 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Mrs. Parrot was admirable; I’ve been absurdly regretting 
her loss. But Mrs. Parrot never quite rose to this!” 

Phil’s tongue clicked an impatient protest against the 
roof of his mouth. “I am still unenlightened, Mr. Phar.” 

“True,” said Maltby. “That’s the worst of you ro- 
mantic idealists. It’s your permanent condition.” He 
settled back in his chair, and fell to his old trick of slowly 
caressing the back of his left hand with the palm of his 
right. “The world, my dear Mr. Farmer,” he contin- 
ued, “the universe, indeed, as we have come gradually to 
know it, is an infinity of blindly clashing forces. They 
have always existed, they will always exist; they have al- 
ways been blind, and they always will be. Anything may 
happen in such an infinity, and we — this world of men 
and microbes — are one of the things which has temporarily 
happened. It’s regrettable, but it is so. And though 
there is nothing final we can do about it, and very little 
in any sense, still — this curious accident of the human in- 
tellect enables us to do something. We can at least ad- 
mit the plain facts of our horrible case. Here, a self- 
realizing accident, we briefly are. Death will dissipate us 
one by one, and the world in due time. That much we 
know. But while we last, why must we add imaginary 
evils to our real ones, and torment ourselves with false 
hopes and ridiculous fears? 

“Why can’t each one of us learn to say: ‘I am an ac- 
cident of no consequence in a world that means nothing. 
I might be a stone, but I happen to be a man. Hence, 
certain things give me pleasure, others pain. And, ob- 
viously, in an accidental, meaningless world I can owe no 
duty to anyone but myself. I owe it to myself to get as 
much pleasure and to avoid as much pain as possible. Un- 
swerving egotism should be my law.” He paused to sip 
again, with a side glance toward Phil. 

“Elementary, all this, I admit. I apologize for re- 
stating it to a scholar. But such are the facts as science 
reveals them — are they not? You have to try somehow to 
go beyond science to get round them. And where do you 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


45 


go— you romantic idealists? Where can you go? No- 
where outside of yourselves, I take it. So you plunge, 
perforce, down below the threshold of reason into a mad 
chaos of instinct and desire and dream. And what there 
do you find? Bugaboos, my dear sir, simply bugaboos: 
divine orders, hells, heavens, purgatories, moral sanctions 
— all the wild insanity, in two words, that had made our 
wretched lives even less worth living than they could and 
should be ! ’ ’ 

“ Should ? Why should ?” asked Phil. ‘ ‘Granting your 
universe, who gives a negligible damn for a little discom- 
fort more or less?” 

“I do!” Maltby asserted. “I want all the comfort I 
can get ; and I could get far more in a world of clear-see- 
ing, secular egotists than I can in this mixed mess of su- 
perstitious, sentimental idealists which we choose to call 
civilized society! Take just one minor practical illustra- 
tion: Say that some virgin has wakened my desire, and 
I hers. In a reasonable society we could give each other 
a certain amount of passing satisfaction. But do we do 
it? No. The virgin has been taught to believe in a mys- 
tical, mischievous something, called Purity! To follow 
her natural instinct would be a sin. If you sin and get 
caught on earth, society will punish you ; and if you don ’t 
get caught here, you’ll infallibly get caught hereafter — 
and then God will punish you. So the virgin tortures her- 
self and tortures me — unless I’m willing to marry her, 
which would be certain to prove the worst of tortures for 
us both. And there you are.” 

It was at this point that Susan spoke from her win- 
dow. 

“Pearl and papa weren’t married, Mr. Phar; but they 
didn’t get much fun out of not being.” 

I confess that I felt a nervous chill start at the base of 
my spine and shiver up toward my scalp. Even Phil, 
the man of Indian gravity, looked for an instant per- 
turbed. 


46 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“Susan!” I demanded sharply. “Have you been lisv 
tening?” 

“Mustn’t I listen?” asked Susan. “Why not? Are 
you cross, Ambo?” 

“The mischief’s done,” said Phil to me quietly; “bet- 
ter not make a point of it.” 

“Please don’t be cross, Ambo,” Susan pleaded, slip- 
ping through the window to the terrace and coming 
straight over to me. “Mr. Phar feels just the way papa 
did about things; only papa couldn’t talk so splendidly. 
He had a very poor vocabulary” — “Vocabulary!’-’ I 
gasped — “except nasty words and swearing. But he 
meant just what Mr. Phar means, inside.” 

Phil, as she ended, began to make strange choking 
noises and retired suddenly into his handkerchief. Maltby 
put down his glass and stared at Susan. 

“Young person,” he finally said, “you ought to be 
spanked ! Don ’t you know it ’s an unforgivable sin to spy 
on your elders?” 

“But you don’t believe in sin,” responded Susan 
calmly, without the tiniest suspicion of pertness in her tone 
or bearing. “You believe in doing what you want to. 
1 wanted to hear what you were saying, Mr. Phar.” 

4 4 Of course you did ! ’ ’ Phil struck in. 4 4 But next time, 
Susan, as a concession to good manners, you might let us 
know you’re in the neighborhood — ?” 

Susan bit her lower lip very hard before she managed 
to reply. 

“Yes. I will next time. I’m sorry, Phil.” (Phil!) 
Then she turned to Maltby. “But I wasn’t spying! I 
just didn’t know you would any of you mind.” 

“We don’t, really,” I said. “Sit down, dear. You’re 
always welcome.” I had been doing some stiff, concen- 
trated thinking in the last three minutes, and now I had 
taken the plunge. “The truth is, Susan,” I went on, 
4 4 that most children who live in good homes, who are what 
is called ‘well brought up,’ are carefully sheltered from 
any facts or words or thoughts which their parents do not 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


47 


consider wholesome or pleasant. Parents try to give their 
children only what they have found to be best in life; 
they try to keep them in ignorance of everything else. ,, 

“But they can’t,” said Susan. “At least, they 
couldn’t in Birch Street.” 

“No. Nor elsewhere. But they try. And they always 
make believe to themselves that they have succeeded. So 
it’s supposed to be very shocking and dangerous for a girl 
of your age to listen to the free conversation of men of 
our age. That’s the reason we all felt a little guilty, at 
first, when we found you ’d been overhearing us. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ How funny, ’ ’ said Susan. ‘ ‘ Papa never cared. ’ ’ 

“Good for him!” exclaimed Maltby. “I didn’t feel 
guilty, for one! I refuse to be convicted of so hypocrit- 
ically squeamish a reaction!” 

“Oh!” Susan sighed, almost with rapture. “You 
know such a lot of words, Mr. Phar! You can say any- 
thing. ’ ’ 

“Thanks,” said Maltby; “I rather flatter myself that 
I can.” 

“And you do/” grunted Phil. “But words,” he took 
up the dropped threads rather awkwardly, ‘ ‘ are nothing in 
themselves, Susan. You are too fond of mere words. It 
isn’t words that matter; it’s ideas.” 

“Yes, Phil,” said Susan meekly, “but I love words — 
best of all when they’re pictures.” 

Phil frowned, without visible effect upon Susan. I saw 
that her mind had gone elsewhere. 

“Ambo?” 

“Yes, dear?” 

“You mustn’t ever worry about me, Ambo. My hear- 
ing or knowing things — or saying them. I — I guess I’m 
different. ’ ’ 

Maltby ’s face was a study in suppressed amazement; 
Phil was still frowning. It was all too much for me, and 
I laughed — laughed from the lower ribs! 

Susan laughed with me, springing from her chair to 


48 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


throw her arms tightly round my neck in one big joyous 
suffocating hug! 

“Oh, Ambo!” she cried, breathless. “Isn’t it going to 
be fun — all of us — together — now we can talk!” 

VI 

The following evening, after dinner, Maltby Phar, 
still a little ruffled by Susan’s unexpected vivacities of 
the night before, retired to the library with pipe and 
book, and Susan and I sat alone together on the garden 
terrace. It was dusk. The heavy air of the past week 
had been quickened and purified by an afternoon thunder- 
storm. Little cool puffs came to us across a bed of glim- 
mering white phlox, bearing with them its peculiar, loamy 
fragrance. Smoke from my excellent cigarette eddied 
now and then toward Susan. 

Silence had stolen upon her as the afterglow faded, re- 
vealing the first patient stars. Already I had learned to 
respect Susan’s silences. She was not, in the usual sense 
of uncertain temper, of nervous irritability, a moody 
child; yet she had her moods — moods, if I may put it so, 
of extraordinary definition. There were hours, not too 
frequent to be disturbing, when she withdrew ; there is 
no better word for it. At such times her thin, alert little 
frame was motionless; she would sit as if holding a pose 
for a portrait, her chin a trifle lifted, her eyes focusing on 
no visible object, her hands lying — always with the palms 
upward — in her lap. I supposed that now, with the 
veiled yet sharply scented dusk, such a mood had crept 
upon her. But for once I was mistaken. Susan, this 
time, had not withdrawn; she was intensely aware. 

“Ambo” — the suddenness with which she spoke startled 
me — “you ought to have lots of children. You ought to 
have a boy, anyway; not just a girl.” 

“A boy? Why, dear? Are you lonely?” 

“Of course not; with you — and Phil!” 

“Then whatever in the world put such a crazy ” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


49 


Susan interrupted; a bad habit of hers, never subse- 
quently broken, and due, doubtless, to an instinctive im- 
patience of foreseeable remarks. 

“You’re so awfully rich, Ambo. You could have dozens 
and not feel it — except that they’d get in your way some- 
times and make your outside cross. But two wouldn’t be 
much more trouble than one. It might seem a little crowded 
— at first; but after while, Ambo, you’d hardly notice it.” 

“Possibly. Still — nice boys don’t grow on bushes, 
Susan. Not the kind of brothers I should have to insist 
upon for you!” 

“I’m not so fussy as all that,” said Susan. “And it 
isn’t fair that I should have everything. Besides, Ambo, 
boys are much nicer than girls. Honestly they are.” 

“Oh, are they! I’m afraid you haven’t had much ex- 
perience with boys! Most of them are disgusting young 
savages. Really, Susan! Their hands and feet are too 
big for them, and their voices don’t fit. They’re always 
breaking things — irreplaceable things for choice, and rais- 
ing the devil of a row. Take my word for it, dear, please. 
I ’m an ex-boy myself ; I know all about ’em ! They were 
never created for civilized human companionship. Why, 
I ’d rather give you a young grizzly bear and be done with 
it, than present you with the common-or-garden brother! 
But if you’d like a nice quiet little sister some day, may- 
be ” 

“I wouldn’t,” said Susan. 

She was silent again for several moments, pondering. 1 
observed her furtively. Nothing was more distant from 
my desire than any addition, of any age, male or female, 
to my present family. Heaven, in its great and unwonted 
kindness, had sent me Susan; she was— to my thinking- 
perfect; and she was enough. Whether in art or in life I 
am no lover of an avoidable anticlimax. But Susan’s 
secret purposes were not mine. 

“Ambo,” she resumed, “I guess if you’d ever lived in 
Birch Street you’d feel differently about boys.” 

“I doubt it, Susan.” 


50 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“I’m sure you’d feel differently about Jimmy.” 

“Jimmy?” 

“Jimmy Kane, Ambo — my Jimmy. Haven’t I ever 
told you about him?” 

Guilefully, persuasively, she edged her chair nearer to 
mine. 

It was then that I first learned of Jimmy’s battle for 
Susan, of the bloody but righteous downfall of Giuseppe 
Gonfarone, and of many another incident long treasured 
in the junior annals of Birch Street. Thus, little by lit- 
tle, though the night deepened about us, my eyes were un- 
sealed. What a small world I had always lived in! For 
howlong had it seemed to me that romance was — approxi- 
mately — dead ! My fingers tightened on Susan ’s, while the 
much-interrogated stars hung above us in their mysterious 

orbits and But no, that is the pathetic fallacy. Stars 

— are they not matter, merely? They could not smile. 

“Don’t you truly think, Ambo,” suggested Susan, “that 
Jimmy ought to have a better chance? If he doesn’t get 
it, he’ll have to work in a factory all his life. And here 
I am — with you ! ’ ’ 

“Yes. But consider, Susan — there are thousands of 
boys like Jimmy. I can’t father them all, you know.” 

“I don’t want you to father them all,” said Susan; 
“and there isn’t anybody like Jimmy! You’ll see.” 

It came over me as she spoke that I was, however un- 
willingly, predestined to see. 

Maltby Phar thought otherwise. That night, after 
Susan had gone up to bed, I talked the thing over with 
him — trying for an airy, detached tone; the tone of one 
who discusses an indifferent matter for w T ant of a more 
urgent. Maltby was not, I fear, deceived. 

“My dear Boz,” he pleaded, “buck up! Get a fresh 
grip on your individuality and haul it back from the brink 
of destruction! If you don’t, that little she-demon above- 
stairs will push it over into the gulf, once for all! You’ll 
be nobody. You’ll be her dupe — her slave. How can you 
smile, man ! I ’in quite serious, and I warn you. Fight 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


51 


the good fight! Defend the supreme rights of your ego, 
before it’s too late!” 

“Why these tragic accents?” I parried. “It’s not 
likely the washlady’s kid would want to come; or his 
mother let him. Susan idealizes him, of course. He’s 
probably quite commonplace and content as he is. No 
harm, though, if it pleases Susan, in looking him over?” 

Maltby took up his book again. He dismissed me. 
“Whom the gods destroy ” he muttered, and ostenta- 

tiously turned a page. 

VII 

My feeling that I was predestined to see, with Susan, 
that there wasn’t anybody like Jimmy — that I was fur- 
ther predestined to take him into my heart and home — 
proved, very much to my own surprise and to the disap- 
pointment of Susan, to be unjustified. This was the first 
bitter defeat that Susan had been called upon to bear since 
leaving Birch Street. She took it quietly, but deeply, 
which troubled my private sense of relief, and indeed 
turned it into something very like regret. The simple 
fact was that much had happened in Birch Street since 
the tragedy of the four-room house ; life had not stood still 
there ; chance and change — deaths and marriages and 
births — had altered the circumstances of whole families. 
In short, that steady flux of mortality, which respects 
neither the dignity of the Hillhouse Avenues nor the ob- 
scurity of the Birch Streets of the world, had in its secret 
courses already borne Jimmy Kane — elsewhere. Pre- 
cisely where, even his mother did not know; and first and 
last it was her entire and passionate ignorance as to 
Jimmy’s present location which foiled us. “West” is a 
geographical expression certainly, but it is not an address. 

Jimmy’s mother lived with her unwashed brood, you 
will remember, above old Heinze’s grocery store, and on 
the following afternoon I ran Susan over there for a tact- 
ful reconnaissance. At Susan’s request we went slowly 
along Birch Street from its extreme right end to its ulti- 


52 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


mate wrong, crossing the waste land and general dump at 
the base of East Rock — historic ground! — mounting the 
long incline beyond, and so passing the four-room house, 
which now seemed to be occupied by at least three families 
of that hardy, prolific race discourteously known to young 
America as “wops.” Throughout this little tour Susan 
withdrew, and I respected her silence. She had not yet 
spoken when we stopped at Heinze ’s corner and de- 
scended. 

Here first it was that forebodings of chance and change 
met us upon the pavement, in the person of old Heinze 
himself, standing melancholy and pensive before the 
screened doorway of his domain. Him Susan accosted. 
He did not at first recognize her, but recollection returned 
to him as she spoke. 

“Ach, so!” he exclaimed, peering with mildest surprise 
above steel-rimmed spectacles. * ‘ Id iss you — nod ? Leedle 
Susanna ! ’ ’ 

My formal introduction followed ; nor was it without 
a glow of satisfaction that I heard old Heinze assure me 
that he had read certain of my occasional essays with at- 
tention and respect. “Ard for ard — yah! Dot iss your 
credo,” he informed me, with tranquil noddings of his 
bumpy, oddly shaped skull. “Dot iss der credo of all 
arisdograds. Id iss nod mine.” 

But Susan was in no mood for general ideas; she de- 
scended at once to particulars, and announced that we 
were going up to see Mrs. Kane. Then old Heinze snag- 
gily, and I thought rather wearily, smiled. 

“Aber,” he objected, lifting twisted, rheumatic hands, 
“dere iss no more such a vooman! Alretty, leedle Su- 
sanna, I haf peen an oldt fool like oders. I haf made her 
my vife.” And though he continued to smile, he also 
sighed. 

Our ensuing interview with Frau* Heinze, formerly the 
Widow Kane, fully interpreted this sigh. Prosperity, 
Susan later assured me, had not improved her. She 
greeted us, above the shop, in her small, shiny, colored 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


53 


lithograph of a parlor, with unveiled suspicion. Her eyes 
were hostile. She seemed to take it for granted, did Mrs. 
Heinze, that we could have no kindly purpose in intruding 
upon her. A dumpy, grumpy little woman, with the par- 
boiled hands and complexion of long years at the wash- 
tubs, her present state of comparative freedom from bond- 
age had not lightened her heart. Her irritability, I told 
Susan after our escape, was doubtless due to the fact 
that she could not share in old Heinze ’s intellectual and 
literary tastes. Susan laughed. 

“She wouldn’t bother much about that; Birch Street’s 
never lonely, and it’s only a step to the State Street 
movies. No; I think it’s corsets.” 

Corsets? The word threw a flood of light. I saw at 
once that it must be a strain upon any disposition to re- 
turn after a long and figureless widowhood to the steel, 
buckram, and rebellious curves of conventional married 
life. I remembered the harnesslike creaking of Mrs. 
Heinze ’s waistline, and forgave her much. 

There was really a good deal to forgive. It was neither 
Susan’s fault nor mine that turned our call into a bad 
quarter of an hour. I had looked for a pretty scene as I 
mounted the stairs behind Susan. I had pictured the 
child, in her gay summer frock, bursting like sunshine 
into Mrs. Heinze ’s stuffy quarters — and so forth. Noth- 
ing of the kind occurred. 

“Who is ut?” demanded Mrs. Heinze, peering forth. 
“Oh, it’s you — Bob Blake’s girl. What do you want?” 
Susan explained. “Well, come in then,” said Mrs. Heinze. 

Susan, less daunted than I by her reception, marched 
in and asked at once for Jimmy. At the sound of his 
name Mrs. Heinze ’s suspicions were sharply focused. If 
the gentleman knew anything about Jimmy, all right, let 
him say so! It wouldn’t surprise her to hear he’d been 
gettin’ himself into trouble! It would surprise her much 
more, she implied, if he had not. But if he had, she 
couldn’t be responsible — nor Heinze either, the poor man! 
Jimmy was sixteen — a man grown, you might say. Let 


54 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


him look after himself, then; and more shame to him for 
the way he’d acted! 

But what way he had acted, and why, Susan at first 
found it difficult to determine. 

4 4 Oh!” she at length protested, following cloudy sug- 
gestions of evil courses. “Jimmy couldn’t do anything 
mean! You know he couldn’t. It isn’t in him!” 

“Isn’t ut indeed! Me slavin’ for him and the 
childer ever since Kane was took off sudden — and not a 
cint saved for the livin’ — let alone the dead! Slavin’ 
and worritin’ — the way you’d think Jimmy ’d ’a’ jumped 
wid joy when Heinze offered! And an easier man not to 
be found — though he ’s got his notions. What man hasn ’t ? 
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. 'Except his beer, he 
don’t drink much,’ I says to Jimmy; ‘and that’s more 
than I could say for your own father, rest his soul!’ 
‘My father wasn’t a Dutchman,’ Jimmy says; givin’ me 
his lip to me face. ‘ He didn ’t talk out against the Pope, ’ 
he says. ‘Nor the Pris ’dint,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t a stink- 
in’ Socialist,’ he says — usin’ them very words! ‘No,’ I 
says, ‘he was a Demycrat — and what’s ut to you? All 
men ’ll be blatherin ’ polytics after hours, ’ I says. ‘ Heinze 
manes no harm by ut, no more nor the rest. ’Tis just his 
talk,’ I says. And after that we had more words, and I 
laid me palm to his head.” 

“Oh!” cried Susan. 

“I’ll not take lip from a son of mine, Susan Blake; 
nor from you, wid all your grand clothes! I’ve seen you 
too often lackin’ a modest stitch to your back!” 

I hastened to intervene. 

“We’ll not trouble you longer, Mrs. Heinze, if you’ll 
only be good enough to tell me where Jimmy is now. He 
was very kind to Susan once, and she wants to thank him 
in some way. I’ve a proposition to make him — which 
might be to his advantage.” 

“Oh — so that’s ut at last! Well, Susan Blake, you’ve 
had the grand luck for the likes of you! But you’re too 
late. Jimmy’s gone.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


55 


“Gone?” 

“ ’Tis the gratitude I get for raisin’ him! Gone he 
is, wid what he’d laid by — twinty-sivin dollars — and no 
word to nobody. There’s a son for ye!” 

“But — oh, Mrs. Heinze — gone where f” 

“West. That’s all I know,” said Mrs. Heinze. “He 
left a line to say he’d gone West. We’ve not had a scrap 
from him since. If he comes to a bad end ” 

“Jimmy won’t come to a bad end!” struck in Susan 
sharply. “He did just right to leave you. Good-by.” 
With that she seized my arm and swept me with her from 
the room. 

1 1 Glory be to God ! Susan Blake — the airs of her now ! ’ ’ 
followed us shrilly, satirically, down the stairs. 

VIII 

Maltby’s visit came to an end, and for the first time I 
did not regret his departure. For some reason, which per- 
haps purposely I left unanalyzed, Maltby was beginning 
to get a trifle on my nerves. But let that pass. Once he 
was gone, Phil Farmer drew a long breath and plunged 
with characteristic thoroughness into his comprehensive 
scheme for the education of Susan. Her enthusiasm for 
this scheme was no less contagious than his own, and I 
soon found myself yielding to her wish to stay on in New 
Haven through the summer, and let in for daily lessons at 
regular hours — very much to my astonishment, the role 
of schoolmaster being one which I had always flattered my- 
self I was temperamentally unfitted to sustain. 

I soon discovered, however, that teaching a mentally 
alert, whimsically unexpected, stubbornly diligent, and 
always grateful pupil is among the most stimulating and 
delightful of human occupations. My own psychic lazi- 
ness, which had been long creeping upon me, vanished in 
this new atmosphere of competition — competition, for that 
is what it came to, with the unwearying Phil. It was a 
real renascence for me. Forsaken gods! how I studied — 


56 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


off hours and on the sly! My French was excellent, my 
Italian fair; but my small Latin and less Greek needed 
endless attention. Yet I rather preen myself upon my 
success; though Phil has always maintained that I over- 
fed Susan with aesthetic flummery, thus dulling the edge 
of her appetite for his own more wholesome daily bread. 

In one respect, at least, I disagreed fundamentally 
with Phil, and here — through sheer force of conviction — 
I triumphed. Phil, who lived exclusively in things of the 
mind, would have turned this sensitive child into a be- 
mused scholar, a female bookworm. This, simply, I would 
not and did not permit. If she had a soul, she had a body, 
too, and I was determined that it should be a vigorous, 
happy body before all else. For her sake solely — for I 
am too easily an indolent man — I took up riding again, 
and tennis, and even pushed myself into golf; with the 
result that my nervous dyspepsia vanished, and my irri- 
tability along with it; with the more excellent result that 
Susan filled and bloomed and ate (for her) three really 
astonishing meals a day. 

It was a busy life — a wonderful life ! Hard work — hard 
play — fun — travel. . . . Ah, those years! 

But I am leaping ahead ! 

Yet I have but one incident left to record of those 
earliest days with Susan — an incident which had impor- 
tant, though delayed, results — affecting in various ways, 
for long unforeseen, Susan’s career, and the destiny of sev- 
eral other persons, myself among them. 

Sonia, Susan’s little Russian maid, was at the bottom 
of it all ; and the first hint of the rather sordid affair came 
to me, all unprepared, from the lips of Miss Goucher. She 
sought me out in my private study, whither I had re- 
tired after dinner to write a letter or two — a most un- 
usual proceeding on her part, and on mine— and she asked 
at once in her brief, hard, respectful manner for ten min- 
utes of my time. I rose and placed a chair for her, uncom- 
fortably certain that this could be no trivial errand; she 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 57 

seated herself, angularly erect, holding her feelings well 
in hand. 

“Mr. Hunt,” she began, “have I your permission to dis- 
charge Sonia?” 

My face showed my surprise. 

“But Susan likes her, doesn’t she, Miss Goucher? And 
she seems efficient ? ’ ’ 

“Yes. A little careless perhaps; but then, she’s young. 
It isn’t her service I object to.” 

“What is the trouble?” 

“ It is a question of character, Mr. Hunt. I have reason 
to think her lacking in — self-respect.” 

“You mean — immoral?” I asked, using the word in the 
restricted sense which I assumed Miss Goucher, like most 
maiden ladies, exclusively attached to it. To my aston- 
ishment Miss Goucher insisted upon more definition. 

“No, I shouldn’t say that. She tells a good many little 
fibs, but she’s not at heart dishonest. And I’m by no 
means certain she can be held responsible for her weakness 
in respect to men.” A slight flush just tinged Miss Gouch- 
er ’s prominent cheek bones; but duty was duty, and she 
persevered. “She has a bad inheritance, I think; and un- 
til she came here, Mr. Hunt, her environment was always 
— unfortunate. If it were not for Susan, I shouldn ’t have 
spoken. I should have felt it my duty to try to protect 

the child and However,” added Miss Goucher, “I 

doubt whether much can be done for Sonia. So my first 
duty is certainly to Miss Susan, and to you.” 

Susan’s quiet admiration for Miss Goucher had more or 
less puzzled me hitherto, but now my own opinion of Miss 
Goucher soared heavenward. Why, the woman was re- 
markable — far more so than I had remotely suspected! 
She had a mind above her station, respectable though her 
station might well be held to be. 

“My dear Miss Goucher,” I exclaimed, “it is perfectly 
evident to me that my interests are more than safe in 
your keeping. Do what you think best, by all means!” 


58 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“ Unfortunately, Mr. Hunt,” said Miss Goucher, 1 ‘ that 
is what I cannot do.” 

“May I ask why?” 

‘ ‘ Society would not permit me, ’ ’ answered Miss Goucher. 

“Please explain,” I gasped. 

‘ ‘ Sonia will cause a great deal of suffering in the world, ’ ’ 
said Miss Goucher, the color on her cheek bones deepen- 
ing, while she avoided my glance. “For herself — and 
others. In my opinion — which I am aware is not widely 
shared — she should be placed in a lethal chamber and pain- 
lessly removed. We are learning to ‘swat the fly,’ ” con- 
tinued Miss Goucher, “because it benefits no one and 
spreads many human ills. Some day we shall learn to 
swat — other things.” Calmly she rose to take her leave. 
Excitedly eager, I sprang up to detain her. 

“Don’t go, Miss Goucher! Your views are really most 
interesting — though, as you say, not widely accepted. 
Certainly not by me. Your plan of a lethal chamber for 
weak sisters and brothers strikes me as — well, drastic. Do 
sit down.” 

Again Miss Goucher perched primly upright on the 
outer edge of the chair beside my own. “I felt bound 
to state my views truthfully,” she said, “since you asked 
for them. But I never intrude them upon others. I’m 
not a social rebel, Mr. Hunt. I lack self-confidence for 
that. When I differ from the received opinion I always 
suspect that I am quite wrong. Probably I am in this 
case. But I think society would agree with me that Sonia 
is not a fit maid for Susan.” 

“Beyond a shadow of doubt,” I assented. “But may 
I ask on what grounds you suspect Sonia?” 

“It is certainly your right,” replied Miss Goucher; “but 
if you insist upon an answer I shall have to give notice.” 

“Then I shall certainly not insist.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Hunt,” said Miss Goucher, rising once 
more. “I appreciate this.” And she walked from the 
room. 

It was the next afternoon that Susan burst into my 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


59 


study without knocking — a breach of manners which she 
had recently learned to conquer, so the irruption surprised 
me. But I noted instantly that Susan’s agitation had car- 
ried her far beyond all thought for trifles. Never had 
I seen her like this. Her whole being was vibrant with 
emotional stress. 

“Ambo!” she cried, all but slamming the door behind 
her. “ Sonia mustn’t go! I won’t let her go! You and 
Miss Goucher may think what you please — I won’t, Ambo! 
It’s wicked! You don’t want Sonia to be like Tilly Jaret- 
ski, do you?” 

4 ‘Like Tilly Jaretski?” My astonishment was so great 
that I babbled the unfamiliar name merely to gain time, 
collect my senses. 

“Yes!” urged Susan, almost leaping to my side, and 
seizing my arm with tense fingers. “She’ll be just like 
Tilly was, along State Street — after her baby came. Tilly 
wasn’t a bit like Pearl, Ambo ; and Sonia isn’t either ! But 
she’s going to have a baby, too, Ambo, like Tilly.” 

With a wrench of my entire nervous system I, in one 
agonizing second, completely dislocated the prejudices of 
a lifetime, and rose to the situation confronting me. 0 
Hillhouse Avenue, right at both ends ! How little you had 
prepared me for this precocious knowledge of life — knowl- 
edge that utterly degrades or most wonderfully saves — 
which these children, out toward the wrong end of the 
Birch Streets of the world, drink in almost with their 
mothers’ milk! How far I, a grown man — a cultured, so- 
phisticated man — must travel, Susan, even to begin to 
equal your simple acceptance of naked, ugly fact — sheer 
fact — seen, smelt, heard, tasted ! How far — how far ! 

“Susan,” I said gravely, “does Miss Goucher know 
about Sonia?” 

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I haven’t seen her yet. 
When Sonia came to me, crying — I ran straight in here ! ’ ’ 

“And how long have you known?” 

“Over a week. Sonia told me all about it, Ambo. Count 
Dimbrovitski got her in trouble. She loved him, Ambo — 


60 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


her way. She doesn’t any more. Sonia can’t love any- 
body long; he can’t, either. That’s why his wife sent 
Sonia off. Sonia says she knows her husband’s like that, 
but so long as she can hush things up, she doesn’t care. 
Sonia says she has a lover herself, and Count Dim doesn ’t 
care much either. Oh, Ambo — how stuffy some people are ! 
I don’t mean Sonia. She’s just pitiful — like Tilly. But 
those others — they’re different — I can feel it! Oh, how 
Artemis must hate them, Ambo!” 

Susan’s tense fingers relaxed, slipping from my arm; 
she slid down to the floor, huddled, and leaning against 
the padded side of my chair buried her face in her hands. 

Very quietly I rose, not to disturb her, and crossing 
to the interphone requested Miss Goucher’s presence. My 
thoughts raced crazily on. In advance of Miss Goucher’s 
coming I had dramatized my interview with her in seven 
different and unsatisfactory ways. When she at last en- 
tered, my temple pulses were beating and my tongue was 
stiff and dry. Susan, except for her shaken shoulders, 
had not stirred. 

“Miss Goucher,” I managed to begin, “shut the door, 
please. ... You see this poor child ?” 

Miss Goucher saw. Over her harsh, positive features 
fell a sort of transforming veil. It seemed to me sud- 
denly — if for that moment only — that Miss Goucher was 
very beautiful. 

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she suggested, “leaving her 
with me?” 

Well, I had not in advance dramatized our meeting in 
this way. In all the seven scenes that had flashed through 
me, I had stood, an unquestioned star, at the center of the 
stage. I had not foreseen an exit. But I most humbly and 
gratefully accepted one now. 

Precisely what took place, what words were said there, 
in my study, following my humble exit, I have never 
learned, either from Miss Goucher or from Susan. I know 
only that from that hour forth the bond between them 
became what sentimentalists fondly suppose the relation- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 61 

ship between mother and daughter must always be — what, 
alas, it so rarely, but then so beautifully, is. 

I date from that hour Miss Goucher’s abandonment of 
her predilection for the lethal chamber ; at least, she never 
spoke of it again. And Sonia stayed with us. Her boy 
was born in my house, and there for three happy years 
was nourished and shamelessly spoiled ; at the end of which 
time Sonia found a husband in the person of young Jack 
Palumbo, unquestionably the pick of all our Hillhouse 
Avenue chauffeurs. Their marriage caused a brief scandal 
in the neighborhood, but was soon accepted as an authen- 
tic and successful fact. 

Chance and change are not always villains, you ob- 
serve; the temperamental Sonia has grown stout and 
placid, and has increased the world’s legitimate population 
by three. Nevertheless, it is the consensus of opinion that 
little Ivan, her first-born, is the golden arrow in her quiver 
— an opinion in which Jack Palumbo delightedly, if rather 
surprisingly, concurs. 

And so much for Sonia. . . . Let the curtain quietly de- 
scend. When it rises again, six years will have passed; 
good years — and therefore unrecorded. Your scribe, 

Susan, is now nearing forty ; and you Great heavens, 

is it possible! Can you be “going on”— twenty? 

Yes, dear You are. 


THE THIRD CHAPTER 


i 

I T was October; the year, 1913. Susan, Miss Goucher 
and I had just returned from Liverpool on the good 
ship “Lusitania” — there was a good ship “Lusitania” 
in those days — after a delightful summer spent in Italy 
and France. Susan and I entirely agree that the season 
for Italy is midsummer. Italy is not Italy until she has 
drunk deep of the sun; until a haze of whitest dust floats 
up from the slow hoofs of her white oxen along Umbrian 
or Tuscan roads. You will never get from her churches 
all they can give unless they have been to you as shadows 
of great rocks in a weary land. To step from reverberat- 
ing glare to vast cool dimness — ah, that is to know at 
last the meaning of sanctuary ! 

But to step from a North River pier into a cynical 
taxi, solely energized by our great American principle 
of “Take a chance!” — to be bumped and slithered by that 
energizing principle across the main traffic streams of im- 
patient New York — that is to reawaken to all the doubt 
and distraction, the implacable multiplicity of a scientifi- 
cally disordered world! 

New Haven was better ; Hillhouse Avenue preserving es- 
pecially — through valorous prodigies of rejection — much 
of its ancient, slightly disdainful, studiously inconspicu- 
ous calm. 

Phil Farmer was waiting for us at the doorstep. For 
all his inclusive greeting, his warm, welcoming smile, he 
looked older, did Phil, leaner somehow, more finely drawn. 
There was a something hungry about him — something in 
his eyes. But if Susan, who notices most things, noted it, 

62 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


63 


she did not speak of her impression to me. She almost 
hugged Phil as she jumped out to greet him and dragged 
him with her up the steps to the door. 

And now, if this portion of Susan’s history is to be 
truthfully recorded, certain facts may as well be set down 
at once, clearly, in due order, without shame. 

1. Phil Farmer was, by this time, hopelessly in love with 
Susan. 

2. So was Maltby Phar. 

3. So was I. 

It should now be possible for a modest but intelligent 
reader to follow the approaching pages without undue 
fatigue. 

n 

Susan never kept a diary, she tells me, but she had, like 
most beginning authors, the habit of scribbling things 
down, which she never intended to keep, and then could 
seldom bring herself to destroy. To a writer all that his 
pen leaves behind it seems sacred; it is, I treacherously 
submit, a private grief to any of us to blot a line. Such 
is our vanity. However inept the work which we force 
ourselves or are prevailed upon to destroy, the unhappy 
doubt always lingers: “If I had only saved it? One can’t 
be sure? Perhaps posterity ?” 

Susan, thank God, was not and probably is not exempt 
from this folly. It enables me from this time forward to 
present certain passages — mere scraps and jottings — from 
her notebooks, which she has not hesitated to turn over 
to me. 

“I don’t approve, Ambo,” was her comment, “but if you 
will write nonsense about me, I can’t help it. What I 
can help, a little, is your writing nonsense about yourself 
or Phil or the rest. It’s only fair to let me get a word in 
edgeways, now and then — if only for your sake and 
theirs. ’ ’ 

That is not, however, my own reason for giving you 
occasional peeps into these notebooks of Susan’s. 


64 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“I’m beginning to wish that Shelley might have had a 
sense of humor. ‘Epipsychidion’ is really too absurd. 
‘Sweet benediction in the eternal curse!’ Imagine, un- 
der any condition of sanity, calling any woman that ! Or 
‘Thou star above the storm!’ — beautiful as the image is. 
‘Thou storm upon the star!’ would make much worse 
poetry, but much better sense. . . . Isn’t it strange that 
I can’t feel this about Wordsworth? He was better off 
without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots — and it’s 
better for us that he didn’t have it. It’s probably better 
for us, too, that Shelley didn’t have it — but it wasn’t bet- 
ter for him. Diddle-diddle-dumpling — what stuff all this 
is! Go to bed, Susan.” 

“There’s no use pretending things are different, Susan 
Blake ; you might as well face them and see them through, 
open-eyed. What does being in love mean ? 

“I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one 
doesn’t care what it means. But I don’t like pouncing, 
overwhelming things — things that crush and blast and 
scorch and blind. I don’t like cyclones and earthquakes 
and conflagrations — at least, I’ve never experienced any, 
but I know I shouldn’t like them if I did. But I don’t 
think I’d be so terribly afraid of them — though I might. 
I think I’d be more — sort of — indignant — disgusted.” 

Editor’s Note: Such English! But pungent stylist as 
Susan is now acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion 
of academic critics, not sufficiently attentive to formal 
niceties of diction. She remains too wayward, too impres- 
sionistic ; in a word, too personal. I am inclined to agree, 
and yet — am I ? 

“It’s all very well to stamp round declaiming that 
you’re captain of your soul, but if an earthquake — even a 
tiny one — comes and shakes your house like a dice box 
and then scatters you and the family out of it like dice — 
it wouldn’t sound very appropriate for your epitaph. ‘I 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


65 


am the master of my fate’ would always look silly on a 
tombstone. Why aren’t tombstones a good test for poetry 
— some poetry? I’ve never seen anything on a tombstone 
that looked real — not even the names and dates. 

* ‘But does love have to be like an earthquake? If it 
does, then it’s just a blind force, and I don’t like blind 
forces. It’s stupid to be blind oneself; but it’s worse to 
have blind stupid things butting into one and pushing one 
about. 

“Hang it, I don’t believe love has to be stupid and 
blind, and go thrashing through things! Ambo isn’t 
thrashing through things — or Phil either. But, of course, 
they wouldn’t. That’s exactly what I mean about love; 
it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized — just tamed. 
Cowed f Then it’s still as wild as ever underneath? I’m 
afraid it is. Oh, dear! 

“Phil and Ambo really are captains of their souls 
though, so far as things in general let them be. Things 
in general — what a funny name for God! But isn’t God 
just a short solemn name for things in general? There 
I go again. Phil says I’m always taking God’s name in 
vain. He thinks I lack reverence. I don’t, really. What 
I lack is — reticence. That’s different — isn’t it, Ambo?” 

The above extracts date back a little. The following 
were jotted early in November, 1913, not long after our 
return from overseas. 

“This is growing serious, Susan Blake. Phil has asked 
you to marry him, and says he needs yon. Ditto Maltby; 
only he says he wants you. Which, too obviously, he does. 
Poor Maltby — imagine his trying to stoop so low as matri- 
mony, even to conquer! As for Ambo — Ambo says noth- 
ing, bless him — but I think he wants and needs you most 
of all. Well, Susan?” 

“Jimmy’s back. I saw him yesterday. He didn’t know 
me. 


66 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“Sex is a miserable nuisance. It muddles things — inter- 
feres with honest human values. It’s just Nature making 
fools of us for her own private ends. These are not pretty 
sentiments for a young girl, Susan Blake !” 

“Speak up, Susan — clear the air! You are living here 
under false pretenses. If you can’t manage to feel like 
Ambo’s daughter — you oughtn’t to stay.” 

ni 

It was perhaps when reticent Phil finally spoke to me 
of his love for Susan that I first fully realized my own 
predicament — a most unpleasant discovery; one which I 
determined should never interfere with Susan’s peace of 
mind or with the possible chances of other, more eligible, 
men. As Susan ’s guardian, I could not for a moment coun- 
tenance her receiving more than friendly attention from 
a man already married, and no longer young. A grim, 
confused hour in my study convinced me that I was an 
impossible, even an absurd, parti. This conviction brought 
with it pain so sharp, so nearly unendurable, that I won- 
dered in my weakness how it was to be unflinchingly borne. 
Yet borne it must be, and without betrayal. It did not 
occur to me, in my mature folly, that I was already, 
and had for long been, self -betrayed. 

“Steady, you old fool!” whispered my familiar demon. 
“This isn’t going to be child’s play, you know. This is 
an hour-by-hour torture you’ve set out to grin and bear 
and live through. You’ll never make the grade, if you 
don’t take cognizance in advance. The road’s devilishly 
steep and icy, and the corners are bad. What’s more, 
there’s no end to it; the crest’s never in sight. Clamp 
your chains on and get into low. . . . Steady ! 

“But, of course,” whispered my familiar demon, 
“there’s probably an easier way round. Why attempt the 
impossible? Think what you’ve done for Susan! Grati- 
tude, my dear sir — affectionate gratitude — is a long step 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


67 


in the right direction ... if it is the right direction. I 
don’t say it is; I merely suggest, en passant , that it may 
be. Suppose, for example, that Susan ” 

“Damn you!” I spat out, jumping from my chair. 
“You contemptible swine!” 

Congested blood whined in my ears like a faint jeering 
laughter. I paced the room, raging — only to sink down 
again, exhausted, my face and hands clammy. 

“What a hideous exhibition,” I said, distinctly address- 
ing a grotesque porcelain Buddha on the mantelpiece. 
Contrary, I believe, to my expectations, he did not reply. 

• My familiar demon forestalled him. 

“If by taking a merely conventional attitude,” he mur- 
mured, “you defeat the natural flowering of two lives ? 

Who are you to decide that the voice of Nature is not also 
the voice of God? Supposing, for the moment, that God is 
other than a poetic expression. If her eyes didn’t haunt 
you,” continued my familiar demon, “or a certain way 
she has of turning her head, like a poised poppy. ...” 

As he droned on within me, the mantelpiece blurred and 
thinned to the blue haze of a distant Tuscan hill, and the 
little porcelain Buddha sat upon this hill, very far off now, 
and changed oddly to the semblance of a tiny huddled 
town. We were climbing along a white road toward that 
far hill, that tiny town. 

“Ambo,” she was saying, “that isn’t East Rock — it’s 
Monte Senario. And this isn’t Birch Street — it’s the 
Faenzan Way. How do you do it, Ambo— you wonderful 
magician ! Just with a wave of your wand you change the, 
world for me; you give me — all this!” 

A bee droned at my ear: “Gratitude, my dear sir. 
Affectionate gratitude. A long step.” 

“Damn you!” I whimpered. . . . But the grotesque por- 
celain Buddha was there again, on the mantelshelf. The 
creases in his little fat belly disgusted me ; they were loath- 
some. I rose. “At least,” I said to him, “I can live 
without you!” Then I seized him and shattered him 
against the fireplace tiles. It was an enormous relief. 


68 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Followed a knock at my door that I answered calmly: 
“Who is it? Come in.” 

Miss Goucher never came to me without a mission; she 
had one now. 

“Mr. Hunt,” she said, “I should like to talk to you 
very plainly. May I? It’s about Susan.” I nodded. 
“Mr. Hunt,” she continued resolutely, “Susan is in a 
very difficult position here. I don’t say that she isn’t 
entirely equal to meeting it ; but I dread the nervous strain 
for her — if you understand?” 

“Not entirely, Miss Goucher; perhaps, not at all.” 

4 4 1 was afraid of this, ’ ’ she responded unhappily. 4 4 But 
I must go on — for her sake.” 

Knowing well that Miss Goucher would face death smil- 
ing for Susan’s sake, her repressed agitation alarmed me. 
4 4 Good heavens!” I exclaimed. 4 4 Is there anything really 
wrong ? ’ ’ 

44 A good deal.” She paused, her lips whitening as she 
knit them together, lest any ill-considered word should 
slip from her. Miss Goucher never loosed her arrows at 
random; she always tried for the bull’s-eye, and usually 
with success. 

44 1 am speaking in strict confidence — to Susan’s protec- 
tor and legal guardian. Please try to fill in what I leave 
unsaid. It is very unfortunate for Susan’s peace of mind 
that you should happen to be a married man.” 

4 4 For her peace of mind ! ’ ’ 

4 4 Yes.” 

4 4 Wait! I daren’t trust myself to fill in what you leave 

unsaid. It’s too — preposterous. Do you mean But 

you can’t mean that you imagine Susan to be in love with 
— her grandfather?” My heart pounded, suffocating me; 
with fright, I think. 

4 4 No,” said Miss Goucher, coldly; 4 4 Susan is not in 
love with her grandfather. She is with you.” 

I could manage no response but an angry one. 4 4 That’s 
a dangerous statement, Miss Goucher! Whether true or 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 69 

not — it ruins everything. You have made our life here 
together impossible. ’ ’ 

“It is impossible/’ said Miss Goueher. “It became so 
last summer. I knew then it could not go on much longer. ’ ’ 

“But I question this! I deny that Susan feels for me 
more than — gratitude and affection.” 

“Gratitude is rare,” said Miss Goueher enigmatically, 
her eyes fixed upon the fragments of Buddha littering 
my hearth. “True gratitude,” she added, “is a strong 
emotion. When it passes between a man and a woman, 
it is like flame. ’ ’ 

“Very interesting!” I snapped. “But hardly enough 
to have brought you here to me with this!” 

“She feels that you need her,” said Miss Goueher. 

“I do,” was my reply. 

“Susan doesn’t need you,” said Miss Goueher. “I 
don’t wish to be brutal; but she doesn’t. In spite of this, 
she can easily stand alone.” 

“I see. And you think that would be best?” 

“Naturally. Don’t you?” 

“I’m not so sure.” 

As I muttered this my eyes, too, fixed themselves on the 
fragments of Buddha. Would the woman never go! I 
hated her; it seemed to me now that I had always hated 
her. What was she after all but a superior kind of servant 
— presuming in this way ! The irritation of these thoughts 
swung me suddenly round to wound her, if I might, with 
sarcasm, with implied contempt. But it is impossible to 
wound the air. With her customary economy of explana- 
tion Miss Goueher had, pitilessly, left me to myself. 

IV 

The evening of this already comfortless day I now re- 
call as one of the most exasperating of my life. Maltby 
Phar arrived for dinner and the week-end — an exaspera- 
tion foreseen; Phil came in after dinner — another; but 
what I did not foresee was that Lucette Arthur would 


70 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


bring her malicious self and her unspeakably tedious hus- 
band for a formal call. Lucette was an old friend of 
Gertrude, and I always suspected that her occasional 
evening visits were followed by a detailed report ; in fact, 
I rather encouraged them, and returned them promptly, 
hoping that they were. In my harmless way of life even 
Lucette ’s talent for snooping could find, I felt, little to 
feed upon, and it did not wholly displease me that Ger- 
trude should be now and then forced to recognize this. 

The coming of Susan had, not unnaturally, for a time, 
provided Lucette with a wealth of interesting conjecture ; 
she had even gone so far as to intimate that Gertrude 
felt I was making — the expression is entirely mine — an ass 
of myself, which neither surprised nor disturbed me, since 
Gertrude had always had a tendency to feel that my tal- 
ents lay in that direction. But, on the whole, up to this 
time — barring the Sonia incident, which had afforded her a 
good deal' of scope, but which, after all, could not be 
safely misinterpreted — Lucette had found at my house 
pretty thin pickings for scandal ; and I could only wonder 
at the unwearying patience with which she pursued her 
quest. 

She arrived with poor Doctor Arthur in tow — Dr. Ly- 
man Arthur, who professed Primitive Eschatology in the 
School of Religion : eschatology being ‘ 4 that branch of the- 
ology which treats of the end of the world and man’s 
condition or state after death” — just upon the heels of 
Phil, who shot me a despairing glance as we rose to greet 
them. 

But Susan, I thought, welcomed them with undisguised 
relief. She had been surpassing herself before the fire, 
chatting blithely, wittily, even a little recklessly ; but there 
are gayer evenings conceivable than one spent in the pres- 
ence of three doleful men, two of whom have proposed 
marriage to you, and one of whom would have done so if 
he were not married already. Almost anything, even 
open espionage and covert eschatology, was better than 
that. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


71 


Lucette — the name suggests Parisian vivacity, but she 
was really large and physically languid and very blonde, 
scented at once, I felt, a something faintly brimstoneish 
in the atmosphere of my model home, and forthwith pre- 
pared herself for a protracted and pleasant evening. It 
so happened that the Arthurs had never met Maltby, and 
Susan carried through the ceremony of introduction with 
a fine swinging rhythm which settled us as one group be- 
fore the fire and for some moments at least kept the conver- 
sation animated and general. 

But Eschatology, brooding in the background, soon put 
an end to this somewhat hectic social burst. The mere 
unnoted presence of Dr. Lyman Arthur, peering near- 
sightedly in at the doorway on a children’s party, has 
been known, I am told, to slay youngling joy and turn 
little tots self-conscious, so that they could no longer be 
induced by agonized mothers to go to Jerusalem, or clap- 
in clap-out. His presence now, gradually but surely, had 
much the same effect. Seated at Maltby ’s elbow, he passed 
into the silence and drew us, struggling but helpless, after 
him. For five horrible seconds nothing was heard but the 
impolite, ironic whispering of little flames on the hearth. 
Was this man’s condition or state after death? Escha- 
tology had conquered. 

Susan, in duty bound as hostess, broke the spell, but 
it cannot be said she rose to the occasion. “Is it a party 
in a parlor,” she murmured wistfully to the flames, “all 
silent and all — damned?” 

Perceiving that Lucette supposed this to be original 
sin, I laughed much more loudly than cheerfully, exclaim- 
ing “Good old Wordsworth!” as I did so. 

Then Maltby ’s evil genius laid hold on him. 

“By the way,” he snorted, “they tell me one of you 
academic ghouls has discovered that Wordsworth had an 
illegitimate daughter— whatever that means! Any truth 
in it? I hope so. It’s the humanest thing I ever heard 
about the old sheep ! ’ ’ 

Doctor Arthur cleared his throat, very cautiously; and 


72 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


it was evident that Maltby had not helped us much. Phil, 
in another vein, helped us little more. 

“I wonder,” he asked, “if anyone reads Wordsworth 
now — except Susan?” 

No one, not even Susan, seemed interested in this ques- 
tion ; and the little flames chuckled quietly once more. 

Something had to be done. 

“Doctor,” I began, turning toward Eschatology, and 
knowing no more than my Kazak hearthrug what I was 
going to say, “is it true that ” 

“Undoubtedly,” intoned Eschatology, thereby saving 
me from the pit I was digging for myself. My incom- 
plete question must have chimed with Doctor Arthur ’s pri- 
vate reflections, and he seemed to suppose some controver- 
sial matter under discussion. “Undoubtedly,” he re- 
peated. . . . “And what is even more important is this ” 

But Lucette silenced him with a “Why is it, dear, that 
you always let your cigar burn down at one side ? It does 
look so untidy.” And she leaned to me. “What delight- 
fully daring discussions you must all of you have here to- 
gether! You’re all so terribly intellectual, aren’t you? 
But do you never talk of anything but books and art and 
ideas? I’m sure you must,” she added, fixing me with 
impenetrable blue eyes. 

“Often,” I smiled back; “even the weather has charms 
for us. Even food. ’ ’ 

Her inquisitive upper lip curled and dismissed me. 

“Why is it,” she demanded, turning suddenly on Susan, 
“that I don’t see you round more with the college boys? 
They’re much more suitable to your age, you know, than 
Ambrose or Phil. I hope you don’t frighten them off, my 
dear, by mentioning Wordsworth? Boys dislike bluestock- 
ings ; and you ’re much too charming to wear them anyway. 
Oh, but you really are! I must take charge of you — get 
you out more where you belong, away from these dreadful 
old fogies!” Lucette laughed her languid, purring, dan- 
gerous laughter. “I’m serious, Miss Blake. You musn’t 
let them monopolize you; they will if you’re not careful. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 73 

They’re just selfish enough to want to keep you to them- 
selves. ’ ’ 

The tone was badinage; but the remark struck home 
and left us speechless. Lucette shifted the tiller slightly 
and filled her sails. “Next thing you know, Miss Blake, 
they’ll be asking you to marry them. Individually, of 
course — not collectively. And, of course — not Ambrose! 
At least you’re safe there,” she hastily added; “aren’t 
you?” 

Maltby, I saw, was furious ; bent on brutalities. Before 
I could check him, “Why?” he growled. “Why, Mrs. 
Arthur, do you assume that Susan is safe with Boz?” 

“Well,” she responded with a slow shrug of her 
shoulders, ‘ ‘ naturally ’ ’ 

“Unnaturally!” snapped Maltby. “Unless forbidden 
fruit has ceased to appeal to your sex. I was not aware 
that it had.” 

Phil’s eyes were signalling honest distress. Susan unex- 
pectedly rose from her chair. Deep spots of color burned 
on her cheeks, but she spoke with dignity. “I have never 
disliked any conversation so much, Mrs. Arthur. Good 
night.” She walked from the room. Phil jumped up 
without a word and hurried after her. Then we all rose. 

It seemed, however, that apologies were useless. Doc- 
tor Arthur had no need for them, since he had not per- 
ceived a slight, and was only too happy to find himself 
released from bondage ; as for Lucette, her assumed frigid- 
ity could not conceal her flaming triumph. As a social 
being, for the sake of the mores , she must resent Susan’s 
snub ; but I saw that she would not have had things happen 
otherwise for a string of matched pearls. At last, at last 
her patience had been rewarded! I could almost have 
written for her the report to Gertrude — with nothing ex- 
plicitly stated, and nothing overlooked. 

Maltby, after their departure, continued truculent, and 
having no one else to rough-house decided to rough-house 
me. The lengthening absence of Susan and Phil had much 
to do with his irritation, and something no doubt with 


74 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


mine. For men of mature years we presently developed 
a very pretty little gutter-snipe quarrel. 

“Damn it, Boz,” he summed his grievances, “it comes 
precisely to this: You’re playing dog in the manger 
here. By your attitude, by every kind of sneaking sug- 
gestion, you poison Susan ’s mind against me. Hang it, I ’m 
not vain — but at least I ’m presentable, and I ’ve been called 
amusing. Other women have found me so. And to speak 
quite frankly, it isn’t every man in my position who would 
offer marriage to a girl whose father ” 

“ I ’d stop there, Maltby, if I were you ! ’ ’ 

“My dear man, you and I are above such prejudices, 
of course! But it’s only common sense to acknowledge 
that they exist. Susan’s the most infernally seductive 
accident that ever happened on this middle-class planet ! 
But all the same, there’s a family history back of her that 
not one man in fifty would be able to forget. My point 
is, that with all her seduction, physical and mental, she’s 
not in the ordinary sense marriageable. And it’s the 
ordinary sense of such things that runs the world. ’ ’ 

“Well ” 

“Well — there you are! I offer her far more than she 
could reasonably hope for ; or you for her. I ’m well fixed, 
I know everybody worth knowing; I can give her a good 
time, and I can help her to a career. It strikes me that if 
you had Susan’s good at heart, you’d occasionally suggest 
these things to her — even urge them upon her. As her 
guardian you must have some slight feeling of responsi- 
bility?” 

“None whatever.” 

“What!” 

“None whatever — so far as Susan’s deeper personal life 
is concerned. That is her affair, not mine.” 

“Then you’d be satisfied to have her throw herself 
away?” 

“If she insisted, yes.\ But Susan’s not likely to throw 
herself away.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, isn ’t she ! Let me tell you this, Boz, once for all : 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


75 


You’re in love with the girl yourself, and though you may 
not know it, you’ve no intention of letting anyone else 
have a chance.” 

“Well,” I flashed, “if you were in my shoes — would 
you?” 

The vulgarity of our give and take did not escape me, 
but in my then state of rage I seemed powerless to escape 
vulgarity. I revelled in vulgarity. It refreshed me. I 
could have throttled Maltby, and I am quite certain he was 
itching to throttle me. We were both longing to throttle 
Phil. Indeed, we almost leaped at him as he stopped in 
the hall doorway to toss us an unnaturally gruff good 
night. 

“Where’s Susan?” I demanded. 

“In your study,” Phil mumbled, hunching into his over- 
coat; “she’s waiting to see you.” Then he seized his 
shapeless soft hat and — the good old phrase best describes 
it — made off. 

“She’s got to see me first!” Maltby hurled at me, 
coarsely, savagely, as he started past. 

I grabbed his arm and held him. It thrilled me to real- 
ize how soft he was for all his bulk, to feel that physically 
I was the stronger. 

“Wait!” I said. “This sort of thing has gone far 
enough. We’ll stop grovelling — if you don’t mind! If 
we can’t give Susan something better than this, we’ve 
been cheating her. It ’s a pity she ever left Birch Street. ’ ’ 

Maltby stared at me with slowly stirring comprehension. 

“Yes,” he at length muttered, grudgingly enough; “per- 
haps you’re right. It’s been an absurd spectacle all round. 
But then, life is.” 

“Wait for me here,” I responded. “We’ll stop butting 
at each other like stags, and try to talk things over like 
men. I’m just going to send Susan to bed.” 

That was my intention. I went to her in the study as a 
big brother might go, meaning good counsel. It was cer- 
tainly not my intention to let her run into my arms and 
press her face to my shoulder. She clung to me with pas- 


76 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


sion, but without joy, and her voice came through the 
tumult of my senses as if from a long way off. 

“Ambo, Ambo! You’ve asked nothing — and you want 
me most of all. I must make somebody happy ! ” 

It was the voice of a child. 

v 

I could not face Maltby again that evening, as I had 
promised, for our good sensible man-to-man talk; a lapse 
in courage which reduced him to rabid speculation and 
restless fury. So furious was he, indeed, after a long hour 
alone, that he telephoned for a taxi, grabbed his suitcase, 
and caught a slow midnight local for New York — from 
which electric center he hissed back over the wires three 
ominous words to ruin my solitary breakfast: 

“He laughs best M. Phar.” 

While my egg solidified and the toast grew rigid I medi- 
tated a humble apologetic reply, but in the end I could 
not with honesty compose one ; though I granted him just 
cause for anger. With that, for the time being, I dis- 
missed him. There were more immediate problems, threat- 
ening, inescapable, that must presently be solved. 

Susan, always an early riser, usually had a bite of break- 
fast at seven o’clock — brought to her by the faithful Miss 
Goucher — and then remained in her room to work until 
lunch time. For about a year past I had so far caught the 
contagion of her example as to write in my study three 
hours every morning ; a regularity I should formerly have 
despised. Dilettantism always demands a fine frenzy, but 
now it astounded me to discover how much respectable 
writing one could do without waiting for the spark from 
heaven ; one could pass beyond the range of an occasional 
article and even aspire to a book. Only the final pages 
of my first real book — Aristocracy and Art , an essay in 
aesthetic and social criticism — remained to be written ; and 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


77 


Susan had made me swear by the Quanglewangle ’s Hat, 
her favorite symbol, to push on with it each morning till 
the job was done. 

Well, Aristocracy and Art has since been published and, 
I am glad to say, forgotten. Conceived in supercilious- 
ness and swaddled in preciosity, it is one of the sins I now 
strive hardest to expiate. But in those days it expressed 
clearly enough the crusted aridity of my soul. How- 
ever — 

I had hoped, of course, that Susan would break over 
this morning and breakfast with me. She did not; and 
from sheer habit I took to my study and found myself in 
the chair before my desk. It was my purpose to think 
things out, and perhaps that is what I supposed myself 
to be doing as I stared dully at an ink blob on my blotter. 
It looked — and I was idiotically pleased by the resem- 
blance — rather like a shark. All it needed was some teeth 
and a pair of flukes for its tail. Methodically I opened my 
fountain pen and supplied these, thereby reducing one 
fragment of chaos to order; and then my eye fell upon 
a half-scribbled sheet, marked “Page 224.” 

The final sentence on the sheet caught at me and an- 
noyed me; it was ill-constructed. Presently it began to 
rearrange itself in whatever portion of us it is that these 
shapings and reshapings take place. Something in its 
rhythm, too, displeased me; it w r as mannered; it minu- 
etted ; it echoed Pater at his worst. It should be simpler, 
stronger. Why, naturally ! I lopped at it, compressed it, 
pulled it about. . . . 

There ! At last the naked idea got the clean expression 
it deserved ; and it led now directly to a brief, clear para- 
graph of transition. I had been worrying over that transi- 
tion the morning before when my pen stopped; now it 
came with a smooth rush, carrying me forward and on. 

Incredible, but for one swiftly annihilated hour I forgot 
all my insoluble life problems! Art, that ancient Circe, 
had waved her wand; I was happy— and it was enough. 
I forgot even Susan. 


78 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

Meanwhile, Susan, busy at her notebook, had all but 
forgotten me. 

“Am I in love with Ambo, or am I just trying to be for 
his sake? If happiness is a test, then I can’t be in love 
with him, for there is no happiness in me. But what has 
happiness to do with love? It’s just as I told nice old 
Phil last night. To be in love is to be silly enough to sup- 
pose that some other silly can gather manna for you from 
the meadows of heaven. Meanwhile, the other silly is 
supposing much the same nonsense about you — or if he 
isn’t, then the sun goes black. What lovers seem to value 
most in each other is premature softening of the brain. 
But surely the union of two vain hopes in a single disap- 
pointment can never mean joy? No. You might as well 
get it said, Susan. Love is two broken reeds trying to be 
a Doric column. 

“Still, there must be some test. Is it passion? How 
can it be ? 

“When I ran to Ambo last night I was pure rhythm 
and flame; but this morning I’m the hour before sunrise. 
No; I’m the outpost star, the one the comets turn — the 
one that peers off into nowhere. 

“Perhaps if Ambo came to me now I should flame 
again; or perhaps I should only make believe for his 
sake. Is wanting to make believe for another’s sake 
enough ? Why not ? I ’ve no patience with lovers who are 
always rhythm and flame. Even if they exist — outside of 
maisons de sante — what good are they? Poets can rave 
about them, I suppose — that ’s something ; but imagine com- 
ing to the end of life and finding that one had merely 
furnished good copy for Swinburne ! No, thank you, Mrs. 
Hephaestus — you beautiful, shameless humbug! I prefer 
Apollo’s lonely magic to yours. I’d rather be Swinburne 
than Iseult. If there’s any singing left to be done I shall 
try to do part of it myself. 

“There, you see; already you’ve forgotten Ambo com 
pletely — now you’ll have to turn back and hunt for him. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


79 


And if he’s really working on Aristocracij and Art this 
morning, as he should be, then he has almost certainly for- 
gotten you. Oh, dear ! but he isn ’t — and he hasn ’t ! Here 
he comes ” 

Yes, I came ; but not to ask for assurances of love. Man 
is so naively egotist, it takes a good deal to convince him, 
once the idea has been accepted, that he is not the object of 
an unalterable devotion. Frankly, I took it for granted now 
that Susan loved me, and would continue to love me till her 
dying hour. 

What I really came to say to her, under the calming 
and strengthening influence of two or three rather well- 
written pages, was that our situation had definitely become 
untenable. I am an emancipated talker, but I am not 
an emancipated man; the distinction is important; the 
hold of mere custom upon me is strong. I could not see 
myself asking Susan to defy the world with me; or if I 
could just see it for my own sake, I certainly couldn’t for 
hers. Nor could I see it for Gertrude’s. Gertrude, after 
all, was my wife ; and though she chose to feel I had driven 
her from my society, I knew that she did not feel willing 
to seek divorce for herself or to grant the freedom of it to 
me. On this point her convictions, having a religious sanc- 
tion, were permanent. Gentle manners, then, if nothing 
higher, forbade me to seize the freedom she denied me. 
Having persuaded Gertrude, in good faith, to enter into 
an unconditional contract with me for life, I could no more 
bring myself to break it than I could have forced myself 
to steal another’s money by raising a check. 

My New England ancestors had distilled into my blood 
certain prejudices; only, where my great-grandfather, or 
even my grandfather, would have said that he refrained 
from evil because he feared God, I was content merely to 
feel that there are some things a gentleman doesn’t stoop 
to. With them it was the stern daughter of the voice of 
God who ruled thoughts and acts ; with me it was, if any- 
thing, the class obligations of culture, breeding, good form. 


80 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Just as I wore correct wedding garments at a wedding, 
and would far rather have cut my throat with a knife than 
carry food on it from plate to mouth, so, in the face of any 
of life’s moral or emotional crises, I clung to what instinct 
and cultivation told me were the correct sentiments. 

Gertrude, it is true, was not precisely fulfilling her part 
in our contract, but then — Gertrude was a woman; and 
the excusable frailties of women should always be regarded 
as trumpet calls to the chivalry of man. Absurdly primi- 
tive, such ideas as these! Seated with Maltby Phar in 
my study, I had laughed them out of court many a time; 
for I could talk pure Bernard Shaw — our prophet of those 
days — with anybody, and even go him one better. But 
when it came to the pinch of decisive action I had always 
thrown back to my sources and left the responsibility on 
them. I did so now. 

Yet it was hard to speak of anything but enchantment, 
witchery, fascination, when, from her desk, Susan looked 
round to me, faintly puzzled, faintly smiling. She was 
not a pretty girl, as young America — its taste superbly 
catered to by popular magazines — understands that 
phrase ; nor was she beautiful by any severe classic stand- 
ard — unless you are willing to accept certain early Italians 
as having established classic standards; not such faultless 
painters as Raphael or Andrea del Sarto, but three or four 
of the wayward lesser men whose strangely personal vision 
created new and unexpected types of loveliness. Not that 
I recall a single head by any one of them that prefigured 
Susan; not that I am helping you, baffled reader, to see 
her. Words are a dull medium for portraiture, or I am 
too dull a dog to catch with them even a phantasmal like- 
less. It is the mixture of dark and bright in Susan that 
eludes me; she is all soft shadow and sharpest gleams. 
But that is nonsense. I give it up. 

It was really, then, a triumph for my ancestors that I 
did not throw myself on my knees beside her chair — the 
true romantic attitude, when all’s said — and draw her 
dark-bright face down to mine. I halted instead just 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 81 

within the doorway, retaining a deathlike grip on the door- 
knob. 

“Dear,” I blurted, “it won’t do. It’s the end of the 
road. We can’t go on.” 

“Can we turn back?” asked Susan. 

I wonder the solid bronze knob did not shatter like hol- 
low glass in my hand. 

“You must help me,” I muttered. 

“Yes,” said Susan, all quiet shadow now, gleamless ; 
“I’ll help you.” 

Half an hour after I left her she telephoned and dis- 
patched the following telegram, signed “Susan Blake,” 
to Gertrude at her New York address: 

“Either come hack to him or set him free. Urgent 

VI 

The reply — a note from Gertrude, the ink hardly dry on 
it, written from the Egyptian tomb of the Misses Carstairs 
— came directly to me that evening; and Mrs. Parrot was 
the messenger. Her expression, as she mutely handed me 
the note, was ineffable. I read the note with sensations of 
suffocation; an answer was requested. 

“Tell Mrs. Hunt,” I said firmly to Mrs. Parrot, “that 
it was she who left me, and I am stubbornly determined 
to make no advances. If she cares to see me I shall be glad 
to see her. She has only to walk a few yards, climb a few 
easy steps, and ring the bell.” 

My courtesy was truly elaborate as I conducted Mrs 
Parrot to the door. Her response was disturbing. 

“It’s not for' me to make observations,” said Mrs. Par- 
rot, “the situation being delicate, and not likely to im- 
prove. But if I was you, Mr. Hunt, I’d not be too stiff. 
No; I’d not be. I would not. No. Not if I valued the 
young lady’s reputation.” 

Like the Pope’s mule, Mrs. Parrot had saved her kick 
many years. I can testify to its power. 


82 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Thirty minutes later this superkick landed me, when 
I came crashing back to earth, at the door of the Egyp- 
tian tomb. 

“How hard it is,” says Dante, “to climb another’s 
stairs,” and he might have added to ring another’s bell, 
under certain conditions of spiritual humiliation and stress. 
Thank the gods — all of them — it was not Mrs. Parrot who 
admitted me and took my card ! 

I waited miserably in the large, ill-lighted reception 
vault of the tomb, which smelt appropriately of lilies, as 
if the undertaker had recently done his worst. How well 
I remembered it, how long I had avoided it! It was here 
of all places, under the contemptuous eye of old Ephraim 
Carstairs, grim ancestral founder of this family ’s fortunes, 
that Gertrude had at last consented to be my wife. And 
there he still lorded it above the fireplace, unchanged, glar- 
ing down malignantly through the shadows, his stiff neck 
bandaged like a mummy’s, his hard, high cheek bones and 
cavernous eyes making him the very image of bugaboo 
death. What an eavesdropper for the approaching recon- 
ciliation; for that was what it had come to. That was 
what it would have to be ! 

It was not Gertrude who came down to me; it was 
Lucette. Lucette — all graciousness, all sympathetic under- 
standing all feline smiles! Dear Gertrude had ’phoned 
her on arriving, and she had rushed to her at once ! Dear 
Gertrude had such a desperate headache! She couldn’t 
possibly see me to-night. She was really ill, had been grow- 
ing rapidly worse for an hour. Perhaps to-morrow? 

I was in no mood to be tricked by this stale subterfuge. 

“See here, Lucette,” I said sternly, “I’m not going to 
fence with you or fool round at cross purposes. Less than 
an hour ago Gertrude sent over a note, asking me to call. ’ ’ 

“To which you returned an insufferable verbal reply.” 

“A bad-tempered reply, I admit. No insult was in- 
tended. And I’ve come now to apologize for the temper.” 

“Oh, dear!” sighed Lucette. “Men always do their 
thinking too late. I wish I could reassure you; but the 


THE HOOK OF SUSAN 


83 


mischief seems to be done. Poor Gertrude is furious.” 

i ‘Then the headache is — hypothetical?” 

“An excuse, you mean? I wish it were, for her sake!” 
Lucette’s eyes positively caressed me, as a tiger might lick 
the still-warm muzzle of an antelope, its proximate meal. 
“If you could see her face, poor creature! She’s in tor- 
ment.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Isn’t that — what you called her headache?” 

“No. I’m ashamed of my boorishness. Let me see Ger- 
trude and tell her so.” 

Lucette smiled, slightly shaking her head. “Impossible 
— till she’s feeling better. And not then — unless she 
changes her mind. You see, Ambrose, Mrs. Parrot’s ver- 
sion of your reply was the last straw.” 

“No doubt she improved on the original,” I muttered. 

“Oh, no doubt,” agreed Lucette calmly. “She would. 
It was silly of you not to think of that.” 

“Yes,” I snapped. “Men always underestimate a 
woman’s malice.” 

“They have so many distractions, poor dears. Men, I 
mean. And we have so few. You can put that in your next 
article, Ambrose?” She straightened her languid curves 
deliberately, as if preparing to rise. 

“Please!” I exclaimed. “I’m not ready for dismissal 
yet. We’ll get down to facts, if you don’t mind. Why is 
Gertrude here at all? After years of silence? Did you 
send for her?” 

Lucette’s spine slowly relaxed, her shoulders drooped 
once more. “I? My dear Ambrose, why on earth should 
I do a thing like that?” 

“I don’t know. The point is, did you?” 

“You think it in character?” 

“Oh — be candid! I don’t mean directly, of course. 
But is she here because of anything you may have tele- 
phoned her — after your call last night?” 

“Really, Ambrose! This is a little too much, even from 
you.” 


84 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


< * Forgive me — I insist ! Is she ? ’ ’ 

‘‘You must have a very bad conscience,” replied Lucette. 

“I am more interested in yours.” 

She laughed luxuriously, ‘ ‘ Mine has never been clearer. ’ ’ 

Did the woman want me to stop her breath with bare 
hands? I gripped the mahogany arms of my stiff Chip- 
pendale chair. 

“Listen to me, Lucette! I know this is all very thrill- 
ing and amusing for you. Vivisection must have its 
charms, of course — for an expert. But I venture to re- 
mind you that once upon a time you were not a bad- 
hearted girl, and you must have some remnants of human 
sympathy about you somewhere. Am I wrong?” 

“You’re hideously rude.” 

“Granted. But I must place you. I won’t accept you 
as an onlooker. Either you’ll fight me or help me — or 
clear out. Is that plain?” 

“You’re worse than rude,” said Lucette; “you’re a 
beast! I always wondered why Gertrude couldn’t live 
with you. Now I know.” 

“That’s better,” I hazarded. “We’re beginning to 
understand each other. Now let’s lay all our cards face up 
on the table ? ’ ’ 

Lucette stared at me a moment, her lips pursed, dubious, 
her impenetrable blue eyes holding mine. 

“I will, if you will,” she said finally. “Let’s.” 

It was dangerous, I knew, to take her at her word; yet 
I ventured. 

“I’ve a weak hand, Lucette; but there’s one honest ace 
of trumps in it.” 

“There could hardly be two,” smiled Lucette. 

“No; I count on that. In a pinch, I shall take the one 
trick essential, and throw the others away.” I leaned to 
her and spoke slowly: “There is no reason, affecting her 
honor or rights, why Gertrude may not return to her home 
— if she so desires. I think you understand me?” 

“Perfectly. You wish to protect Miss Blake. You 
would try to do that in any case, wouldn ’t you ? But I ’m 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


85 


rather afraid you’re too late. I’m afraid Miss Blake has 
handicapped you too heavily. If so, it was clever of her — 
for she must have done it on purpose. You see, Ambrose, 
it was she who sent for Gertrude. ’ ’ 

‘ £ Susan ! ’ ’ 

“Susan. Telegraphed her — of all things! — either to 
come home to you or set you free. The implication ’s trans- 
parent. Especially as I had thought it my duty to warn 
Gertrude in advance — and as Mr. Phar sent her, by mes- 
senger, a vague but very disturbing note this morning.” 

“Maltby?” 

“Yes. His note was delivered not five minutes ahead of 
Susan’s wire. Gertrude caught the next train. And there 
you are. ’ ’ 

Well, at least I began to see now, dimly, where Maltby 
was, where Susan was, where we all were — except, possibly 
Gertrude. Putting enormous constraint on my leaping 
nerves, I subdued every trace of anger. 

‘ ‘ Two more questions, Lucette. Do you believe me when 
I say, with all the sincerity I’m capable of, that Susan 
is slandered by these suspicions?” 

“ Really,” answered Lucette, with a little worried frown, 
as if anxiously balancing alternatives, “I’m not, am I, in a 
position to judge?” 

I swallowed hard. ‘ ‘ All right, ’ ’ I managed to say coldly. 
“Then I have placed you. You’re not an onlooker — you’re 
an open foe.” 

“And the second question, Ambrose?” 

“What, precisely, does Gertrude want from me?” 

“I’m not, am I, in a position to judge?” repeated Lu- 
cette. “But one supposes it depends a little on what 
you’re expecting — from her?” 

“All I humbly plead for,” said I, “is a chance to see 
Gertrude alone and talk things over.” 

“Don’t you mean talk her over?” suggested Lucette. 
“And aren’t you,” she murmured, “forgetting the last 
straw?” 


86 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


vn 

My confusion of mind, my consternation, as I left the 
Egyptian tomb, was pitiable. One thing, one only, I saw 
with distinctness: The being I loved best was to be har- 
ried and smirched, an innocent victim of the folly and 
malignity of others. 

“Never,” I muttered. “Never — never — never!” 

This was all very grim and virile; yet I knew that I 
could grit my teeth and mutter Never! from now till the 
moon blossomed, without in any way affecting the wretched 
situation. Words, emotional contortions, attitudes — would 
not help Susan; something sensible must be done — the 
sooner the better. Something sensible and decisive — but 
what? There were so many factors involved, human, in- 
calculable factors; my thought staggered among them, 
fumbling like a drunken man for the one right door that 
must be found and opened with the one right key. It was 
no use; I. should never be able to manage it alone. To 
whom could I appeal ? Susan, for the time being, was out 
of the question; Maltby had maliciously betrayed a long 
friendship. Phil ? Why of course, there was always Phil ! 
Why hadn’t I thought of him before? 

I turned sharply and swung into a rapid stride. With 
some difficulty I kept myself from running. Phil seemed 
to me suddenly an intellectual giant, a man of infinite 
heart and unclouded will. Why had I never appreciated 
him at his true worth? My whirling perplexities would 
have no terrors for him ; he would at once see through 
them to the very thing that should at once be undertaken. 
Singular effect of an overwhelming desire and need ! Faith 
is always born of desperation. We are forced by deep- 
lying instincts to trust something, someone, when we can 
no longer trust ourselves. As I hurried down York Street 
to his door, my sudden faith in Phil was like the faith 
of a broken-spirited convert in the wisdom and mercy of 
God. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


87 


Phil’s quarters were on the top floor of a rooming-house 
for students; he had the whole top floor to himself and 
had lived there simply and contentedly many years, with 
his books, his pipes, his papers, and his small open wood 
fire. Phil is not destitute of taste, but he is by no means 
an aesthete. His furniture is of the ordinary college- 
room type — Morris chair of fumed oak, and so on — picked 
up as he needed it at the nearest department store; but 
he has two or three really good framed etchings on the 
walls of his study; one Seymour Haden in particular — the 
Erith Marshes — which I have often tried to persuade him 
to part with. There is a blending of austerity and subtlety 
in the work of the great painter-etchers that could not 
but appeal to this austere yet finely organized man. 

His books are wonderful — not for edition or binding — he 
is not a bibliophile; they are wonderful because he keeps 
nothing he has not found it worth while to annotate. 
There is no volume on his shelves whose inside covers and 
margins are not filled with criticism or suggestive comment 
in his neat spiderwebby hand; and Phil’s marginal notes 
are usually far better reading than the original text. Susan 
warmly maintains that she owes more to the inside covers 
of Phil’s books than to any other source; insists, in fact, 
that a brief note in his copy of Santayana’s Reason in 
Common Sense, at the end of the first chapter, established 
her belief once for all in mind as a true thing, an inde- 
structible and creative reality, destined after infinite strug- 
gle to win its grim fight with chaos. I confess I could 
never myself see in this note anything to produce so amaz- 
ing an affirmation; but in these matters I am a worm; I 
have not the philosophic flair. Here it is: 

“ ‘We know that life is a dream, and how should think- 
ing be more?’ Because, my dear Mr. Santayana, a dream 
cannot propagate dreams and realize them to be such. The 
answer is sufficient.” 

Well, certainly Susan, too, seemed to feel it sufficient; 
and perhaps I should agree if I better understood the 
answer. . . . But I have now breasted four flights to Phil 


88 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and am knocking impatiently. . . . He opened to me and 
welcomed me cordially, all trace of his parting gruffness 
of the other evening having vanished, though he was still 
haggard about the eyes. He was not alone. Through the 
smoke haze of his study I saw a well-built youngster stand- 
ing near the fireplace, pipe in hand; some college boy, of 
course, whom Phil was being kind to. Phil was forever 
permitting these raw boys to cut in upon his precious hours 
of privacy; yet he was at the opposite pole from certain 
faculty members, common to all seats of learning, who 
toady to the student body for a popularity which they feel 
to be a good business asset, or which they find the one at- 
tainable satisfaction for their tottering self-esteem. 

Phil, who had had to struggle for his own education, 
was genuinely fond of young men who cared enough for 
education to be willing to struggle for theirs. He had be- 
come unobtrusively, by a kind of natural affinity, the elder 
brother of those undergraduates who were seekers in any 
sense for the things of the mind. For the rest, the tri- 
umphant majority — fine, manly young fellows as they 
usually were, in official oratory at least — he was as blankly 
indifferent as they were to him. 

“My enthusiasm for humanity is limited, fatally lim- 
ited,” he would pleasantly admit. “For the human tur- 
nip, even when it’s a prize specimen, I have no spon- 
taneous affection whatever.” 

On the other hand it was not the brilliant, exceptional 
boy whom he best loved. It was rather the boy whose in- 
terest in life, whose curiosity, was just stirring toward 
wakefulness after a long prenatal and postnatal sleep. 
For such boys Phil poured forth treasures of sympa- 
thetic understanding ; and it was such a youth, I presume, 
who stood by the fireplace now, awkwardly uncertain 
whether my coming meant that he should take his leave. 

His presence annoyed me. On more than one occasion 
I had run into this sort of thing at PhiUs rooms, had suf- 
fered from the curious inability of the undergraduate, 
even when he longs himself to escape, to end a visit — take 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


89 


his hat, say good-by simply, and go. It doesn’t strike 
one offhand as a social accomplishment of enormous diffi- 
culty ; yet it must be — it so paralyzes the social resource- 
fulness of the young. 

Phil introduced me to Mr. Kane, and Mr. Kane drooped 
his right shoulder — the correct attitude for this form of 
assault — grasped my hand, and shattered my nerves — with 
the dislocating squeeze which young America has perfected 
as the high sign of all that is virile and sincere. I sank 
into a chair to recover, and to my consternation Mr. Kane, 
too, sat down. 

“Jimmy’s just come to us,” said Phil, relighting his 
pipe. “He passed his entrance examinations in Detroit 
last spring, but he had to finish up a job he was on out 
there before coming East. So he has a good deal of work 
to make up, first and last. And it c ’s all the harder for 
him, because he’s dependent upon himself for support.” 

“Oh,” said Jimmy, “what I’ve saved ’ll last me through 
this year, I guess.” 

“Yes,” Phil agreed; “but it’s a pity to touch what 
you’ve saved.” He turned to me. “You see, Hunt, we’re 
talking over all the prospects. Aren’t we, Jimmy?” 

“Yes, sir,” answered Jimmy. “Prof. Farmer thinks,” 
he added, ‘ 4 that I may be making a mistake to try it here ; 
he thinks it may be a waste of time. I ’m kind of up in the 
air about it, myself.” 

“Jimmy’s rather a special case,” struck in Phil, drop- 
ping into a Morris chair and thrusting his legs out. “He’s 
twenty-two now; and he’s already made remarkably good 
as an expert mechanic. He left his home here over six 
years ago, worked his way to Detroit, applied for a job 
and got it. Now there’s probably no one in New Haven 
who knows more than this young man about gas engines, 
steel alloys, shop organization, and all that. The little 
job that detained him was the working out of some minor 
but important economy in the manufacture of automo- 
biles. He suggested it by letter to the president of the 


90 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


company himself, readily obtained several interviews with 
his chief, and was given a chance to try it out. 

“It has proved its practical worth already, though you 
and I are far too ignorant to understand it. As a result, 
the president of the company offered him a much higher 
position at an excellent salary. It's open to him still, 
if he chooses to go back for it. But Jimmy has decided 
to turn it down for a college education. And Pm wonder- 
ing, Hunt, whether Yale has anything to give him that 
will justify such a sacrifice — anything that he couldn’t 
obtain for himself, at much less expense, without three 
years waste of time and opportunity. How does it strike 
you, old man ? What would you say, offhand, without 
weighing the matter?” 

What I wanted to say was, 4 ‘Damn it all ! I ’m not here 
at this time of night to interest myself in the elementary 
problems of Jimmy Kane!” In fact, I did say it to my- 
self, with considerable energy — only to stop at the name, 
to stare at the boy before me, and to exclaim in a swift 
flash of connection, “Great Scott! Are you Susan’s 
Jimmy?” 

“ ‘Susan’s Jimmy’!” snorted Phil, with a peculiar grin. 
“Of course he’s Susan’s Jimmy! I wondered how long it 
would take you!” 

As for Susan’s Jimmy, his expression was one of deso- 
lated amazement. Either his host and his host’s friend, 
or he himself — had gone suddenly mad! The drop of 
his jaw was parentheses about a question mark. His blue 
eyes piteously stared. 

“I guess I’m not on, sir,” he mumbled to Phil, blush- 
ing hotly. 

He was really a most attractive youth, considering his 
origins. I eyed him now shamelessly, and was forced to 
wonder that the wrong end of Birch Street should have 
produced not only Susan — who would have proved the 
phcenix of any environment — but this pleasant-faced, 
confidence-inspiring boy, whose expression so oddly min- 
gled simplicity, energy, stubborn self-respect, and the cheer- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


91 


fulness of good health, an unspoiled will, and a hopeful 
heart. He seemed at once too mature for his years and 
too naive ; concentration had already modelled his forehead, 
but there was innocence in his eyes. Innocence — I can 
only call it that. His eyes looked out at the world with 
the happiest candor ; and I found myself predicting of him 
what I had nevdr yet predicted of mortal woman or man : 
“He’s capable of anything — but sophistication; he’ll get 
on, he’ll arrive somewhere — but he will never change.” 

Phil, meanwhile, had eased his embarrassment with a 
friendly laugh. “It’s all right, Jimmy; we’re not the 
lunatics we sound. Don’t you remember Bob Blake’s kid 
on Birch Street?” 

“Oh! Her?” 

“Mr. Hunt became her guardian, you know, after ” 

“Oh!” interrupted Jimmy, beaming on me. “You’re 
the gentleman that ” 

“Yes,” I responded; “I’m the unbelievably fortunate 
man. ’ ’ 

“She was a queer little kid,” reflected Jimmy. “I 
haven’t thought about her for a long time.” 

“That’s ungrateful of you,” said Phil; “but of course 
you couldn’t know that.” 

Question mark and parentheses formed again. 

“Phil means,” I explained, “that Susan has never for- 
gotten you. It seems you did battle for her once, down 
at the bottom of the Birch Street incline?” 

“Oh, gee!” grinned Jimmy. “The time I laid out Joe 
Gonfarone? Maybe I wasn’t scared stiff that day! Well, 
what d’y’ think of her remembering that!” 

“You’ll find it’s a peculiarity of Susan,” said Phil, 
“that she doesn’t forget anything.” 

“Why — she must be grown up by this time,” surmised 
Jimmy. “It was mighty fine of you, Mr. Hunt, to do what 
you did ! I ’d kind of like to see her again some day. But 
maybe she’d rather not,” he added quickly. 

“Why?” asked Phil. 


92 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“Well,” said Jimmy, “she had a pretty raw deal on 
Birch Street. Seeing me — might bring back things?” 

“It couldn’t,” I reassured him. “Susan has never let 
go of them. She uses all her experience, every part of it, 
every day.” 

Jimmy grinned again. “It must keep her hustling! 
But she always was different, I guess, from the rest of us. ’ 9 
With a vague wonder, he addressed us both: “You think 
a lot of her, don’t you?” 

For some detached, ironic god this moment must have 
been exquisite. I envied the god his detachment. The 
blank that had followed his question puzzled Jimmy and 
turned him awkward. He fidgeted with his feet. 

“Well,” he finally achieved, “I guess I’d better be off, 
professor. I’ll think over all you said.” 

“Do,” counselled Phil, rising, “and come to see me 
to-morrow. We mustn’t let you take a false step if we 
can avoid it.” 

“It’s certainly great of you to show so much interest,” 
said Jimmy, hunching himself at last out of his chair. 
“I appreciate it a lot.” He hesitated, then plunged. 
“It’s been well worth it to me to come East again — just 
to meet you .” 

“Nonsense!” laughed Phil, shepherding him skillfully 
toward the door. . . . 

When he turned back to me, it was with the evident in- 
tention of discussing further Jimmy’s personal and educa- 
tional problems; but I rebelled. 

“Phil,” I said, “I know what Susan means to you, and 
you know — I think — what she means to me. Now, through 
my weakness, stupidity, or something, Susan’s in danger. 
Sit down please, and let me talk. I’m going to give you 
all the facts, everything — a full confession. It’s bound, 
for many reasons, to be painful for both of us. I ’m sorry, 
old man — but we’ll have to rise to it for Susan’s sake; 
see this thing through together. I feel utterly imbecile and 
helpless alone.” 

Half an hour later I had ended my monologue, and we 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 93 

both sat silent, staring at the dulled embers on the 
hearth. . . . 

At length Phil drew in a slow, involuntary breath. 

“Hunt,” he said, “it’s a humiliating thing for a pro- 
fessional philosopher to admit, but I simply can’t trust 
myself to advise you. I don’t know what you ought to 
do ; I don ’t know what Susan ought to do ; or what I should 
do. I don’t even know what your wife should do; though 
I feel fairly certain that whatever it is, she will try some- 
thing else. Frankly, I’m too much a part of it all, too 
heartsick, for honest thought.” 

He smiled drearily and added, as if at random : “ ‘ Physi- 
cian, heal thyself.’ What an abysmal joke! How the 
fiends of hell must treasure it. They have only one better 
— ‘Man is a reasonable being!’ ” He rose, or rather he 
seemed to be propelled from his chair. “Hunt! Would 
you really like to know what all my days and nights of 
intense study have come to? The kind of man you’ve 
turned to for strength? My life has come to just this: 
I love her, and she doesn’t love me! 

“ Oh ! ” he cried — ‘ ‘ Go home. For God ’s sake, go home ! 
I’m ashamed. ...” 

So I departed, like Omar, through the same door wherein 
I went ; but not before I had grasped — as it seemed to me 
for the first time — Phil’s hand. 

vm 

There are some verses in Susan ’s notebook of this period, 
themselves undated, and never subsequently published, 
which — from their position on the page — must have been 
written about this time and may have been during the 
course of the momentous evening on which I met Jimmy 
Kane at Phil Farmer’s rooms. I give them now, not as a 
favorable specimen of her work, since she thought best 
to exclude them from her first volume, but because they 
throw some light at least on the complicated and rather 
obscure state of mind that was then hers. They have no 


94 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


title, and need none. If yon should feel they need inter- 
pretation — “guar da e passa”! They are not for you. 

Though she rose from the sea 
There were stains upon her whiteness ; 

All earth’s waters had not sleeked her clean. 

For no tides gave her birth , 

Nor the salt , glimmering middle depths ; 

But slime spawned her , the couch of life , 

The sunless ooze , 

The green bed of Poseidon , 

Where with sordid Chaos he mingles obscurely. 

Her flanks were of veined marble ; 

There were stains upon her. 

But she who passes , lonely , 

Through waste places , 

Through bog and forest; 

Who follows boar and stag 
Unwearied; 

Who sleeps , fearless , among the hills; 

Though she track the wilds , 

Though she breast the crags , 

Choosing no path — 

Her kirtle tears not , 

Her ankles gleam, 

Her sandals are silver. 

IX 

It was midnight when I reached my own door that night 
but I was in no mood for lying in bed stark awake in the 
spiritual isolation of darkness. I went straight to my 
study, meaning to make up a fire and then hypnotize my- 
self into some form of lethargy by letting my eyes follow 
the printed lines of a book. If reading in any other sense 
than physical habit proved beyond me, at least the narcotic 
monotony of habit might serve. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


95 


But I found a fire, already falling to embers, and Susan 
before it, curled into my big wing chair, her feet beneath 
her, her hands lying palms upward in her lap. This picture 
fixed me in the doorway while my throat tightened. Susan 
did not stir, but she was not sleeping. She had withdrawn. 

Presently she spoke, absently — from Saturn’s rings; or 
the moon. 

“Ambo? I’ve been waiting to talk to you; but now I 
can’t or I’ll lose it — the whole movement. It’s like a sym- 
phony — great brasses groaning and cursing — and then 
violins tearing through the tumult to soar above it.” 

Her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them 
again it was to shake herself free from whatever spell had 
bound her. She half yawned, and smiled. 

‘ 4 Gone, dear — all gone. It’s not your fault. Words 
wouldn’t hold it. Music might — but music doesn’t come. 
. . . Oh, poor Ambo — you’ve had a wretched time of it! 
How tired you look ! ’ ’ 

I shut the door quietly and went to her, sitting on the 
hearth rug at her feet, my knees in my arms. 

“Sweetheart,” I said, “it seems that in spite of myself 
I ’ve done you little good and about all the harm possible. ’ ’ 
And I made a clean breast of all the facts and fears that 
the evening had developed. “So you see,” I ended, “what 
my guardianship amounts to ! ” 

Susan’s hand came to my shoulder and drew me back 
against her knees ; she did not remove her hand. 

“Ambo,” she protested gently, “I’m just a little angry 
with you, I think.” 

“No wonder!” 

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “If I am angry it’s because you 
can say stupid things like that! Don’t you see, Ambo, the 
very moment things grow difficult for us you forget to 
believe in me — begin to act as if I were a common or 
garden fool? I’m not, though. Surely you must know in 
your heart that everything you ’re afraid of for me doesn ’t 
matter in the least. What harm could slander or scandal 
possibly do me, dear? Me, I mean? I shouldn’t like it, 


96 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


of course, because I hate everything stodgy and formidable - 
ment bete. But if it happens, I shan’t lose much sleep over 
it. You’re worrying about the wrong things, Ambo; 
things that don’t even touch our real problem. And the 
real problem may prove to be the real tragedy, too.” 

‘‘Tragedy?” I mumbled. 

‘ ‘ Oh, I hope not — I think not ! It all depends on whether 
you care for freedom; on whether you’re really passion’s 
slave. I don ’t believe you are. ’ ’ 

The words wounded me. I shifted, to look up at, to 
question, her shadowy face. ‘ ‘ Susan, what do you mean ? ’ ’ 

“I suppose I mean that I’m not, Ambo. You’re far 
dearer to me than anybody else on earth; your happiness, 
your peace, mean everything to me. If you honestly can’t 
find life worth while without me — can’t — I’ll go with you 
anywhere; or face the music with you right here. First, 
though, I must be sincere with you. I can live away from 
you, and still make a life for myself. Except your day- 
by-day companionship — I’d be lonely without that, of 
course — I shouldn’t lose anything that seems to me really 
worth keeping. Above all, I shouldn’t really lose you.” 

“Susan! You’re planning to leave me!” 

“But, Ambo — it’s only what you’ve felt to be neces- 
sary; what you’ve been planning for me!” 

“As a duty — at the bitterest possible cost! How dif- 
ferent that is ! You not only plan to leave me — I feel that 
you want to ! ” 

“Yes, I want to. But only if you can understand why.” 

“I don’t understand!” 

“Ah, wait, Ambo! You’re not speaking for yourself. 
You’re a slave now, speaking for your master. But it’s 
you I want to talk to ! ” 

I snarled at this. ‘ ‘ Why ? When you ’ve discovered your 
mistake so soon! . . .You don’t love me.” 

She sighed, deeply unhappy; though my thin-skinned 
self-esteem wrung from her sigh a shade of impatience, 
too. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


97 


“If not, dear,” she said, “we had better find it out be- 
fore it’s too late. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps love is 
something I only guess at and go wrong about. If love 
means that I should be utterly lost in you and nothing with- 
out you — if it means that I would rather die than leave 
you — well, then I don’t love you. But all the same, if 
love honestly means that to you — I can’t and won’t go 
away. ’ ’ She put out her hand again swiftly, and tightened 
her fingers on mine. 

“It’s a test, then. Is that it?” I demanded. “You want 
to go because you’re not sure?” 

“I’m sure of what I feel,” she broke in ; “and more than 
that, I doubt if I’m made so that I can ever feel more. 
No; that isn’t why I want to go. I’ll go if you can let 
me, because — oh, I’ve got to say it, Ambo! — because at 
heart I love freedom better than I love love — or you. And 
there’s something else. I’m afraid of — please try to under- 
stand this, dear — I’m afraid of stuffiness for us both!” 

‘ 1 Stuffiness ? ’ ’ 

“Sex is stuffy, Ambo. The more people let it mess up 
their lives for them, the stuffier they grow. It’s really 
what you’ve been afraid of for me — though you don’t put 
it that way. But you hate the thought of people saying— 
with all the muddy little undercurrents they stir up round 
such things — that you and I have been passion’s slaves. 
We haven’t been — but we might be; and suppose we were. 
It’s the truth about us — not the lies — that makes all the 
difference. You’re you — and I’m I. It’s because we’re 
worth while to ourselves that we’re worth while to each 
other. Isn’t that true? But how long shall we be worth 
anything to ourselves or to each other if we accept love as 
slavery, and get to feeling that we can’t face life, if it 
seems best, alone ? Ambo, dear, do you see at all what I ’m 
driving at?” 

Yes; I was beginning to see. Miss Goucher’s desolate 
words came suddenly back to me: “Susan doesn’t need 
you.” 


98 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


x 

Next morning, while I supposed her at work in her 
room, Susan slipped down the back stairs and off through 
the garden. It was a heavy forenoon for me, perhaps 
the bleakest and dreariest of my life. But it was a 
busy forenoon for Susan. She began its activities by a 
brave intuitive stroke. She entered the Egyptian tomb 
and demanded an interview with Gertrude. What is 
stranger, she carried her point — as I was presently to be 
made aware. 

Miss Goucher tapped at the door, entered, and handed 
me a card. So Gertrude had changed her mind ; Gertrude 
had come. I stared, foolishly blank, at the card between 
my fingers, while Miss Goucher by perfect stillness effaced 
herself, leaving me to my lack of thought. 

“Well,” I finally muttered, “sooner or later ” 

Miss Goucher, perhaps too eagerly, took this for assent. 
“Shall I say to Mrs. Hunt that you are coming down?” 

I forced a smile, fatuously enough, and rose. 

“When I’m down already? Surely you can see, Miss 
Goucher, that I’ve touched the bottom?” Miss Goucher 
did not reply. “I’ll go myself at once,” I added formally. 
“Thank you, Miss Goucher.” 

Gertrude was waiting in the small Georgian reception 
room, whose detailed correctness had been due to her own ; 
waiting without any vulgar pretense at entire composure. 
She was walking slowly about, her color was high, and it 
startled me to find her so little altered. Not a day seemed 
to have added itself; she looked under thirty, though I 
knew her to be thirty-five; she was even handsomer than 
I had chosen to remember. Even in her present unusual 
restlessness, the old distinction, the old patrician authority 
was hers. Her spirit imposed itself, as always ; one could 
take Gertrude only as she wished to be taken — seriously— 
humbly grateful if exempted from disdain. Gertrude 
never spoke for herself alone ; she was at all times repre- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


99 


sentative — almost symbolic. Homage met in her not a 
personal gratitude, but the approval of a high, unbroken 
tradition. She accepted it graciously, without obvious 
egotism, not as due to her as a temporal being, but as due — 
under God — to that timeless entity, her class. I am not 
satirizing Gertrude; I am praising her. She, more than 
any person I have ever known, made of her perishing sub- 
stance the temple of a completely realized ideal. 

It was, I am forced to assume, because I had failed in 
entire respect for and submission to this ideal that she had 
finally abandoned me. It was not so much incompatibility 
of temperament as incompatibility of worship. She had 
removed a hallowed shrine from a felt indifference and 
a possible contamination. That was all, but it was every- 
thing. And as I walked into the reception room I saw that 
the shrine was still beautiful, faultlessly tended, and ready 
for any absolute but dignified sacrifice. 

“Gertrude,” I began, “it’s splendid of you to overlook 
my inexcusable rudeness of yesterday ! I ’m very grateful. ’ ’ 

“I have not forgiven you,” she replied, with casual 
indignation — just enough for sincerity and not a shade 
too much for art. “Don’t imagine it’s pleasant for me to 
be here. I should hardly have risked your misinterpreting 
it, if any other course had seemed possible.” 

“You might simply have waited,” I said. “It was my 
intention to call this evening, if only to ask after your 
health.” 

“I could not have received you,” said Gertrude. 

“You find it less difficult here?” 

“Less humiliating. I’m not, at least, receiving a hus- 
band who wishes to plead for reconciliation — on intoler- 
able grounds.” 

“May I offer you a chair? Better still — why not come 
to the study? We’re so much less likely to be disturbed.” 

She accepted my suggestion with a slight nod, and her- 
self led the way. 

“Now, Gertrude,” I resumed, when she had consented 
to an easy-chair and had permitted me to close the door. 


100 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“whatever the situation and misunderstandings between 
us, can’t we discuss them” — and I ventured a smile — 
“more informally, in a freer spirit?” 

She caught me up. “Freer! But I understand — less 
disciplined. How very like you, Ambrose. How un- 
changed you are. ’ ’ 

“And you, Gertrude! It’s a compliment you should 
easily forgive.” 

She preferred to ignore it. ‘ ‘ Miss Blake, ’ ’ she announced, 
“has just been with me for an hour.” 

She waited the effect of this. The effect was consider- 
able, plunging me into dark amazement and conjecture. 
Not daring to make the tiniest guess as to the result of so 
fantastic an interview, I was left not merely tongue-tied 
but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beg- 
gared me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal 
humiliation of alms withheld or bestowed. 

“Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious 
mixed charm — so subtle and so deeply uncivilized — I can 
see, of course, why she has bewitched you,” said Gertrude 
reflectively, and paused. “And I can see,” she continued, 
musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of 
soliloquy, “why you have just failed to capture her imagi- 
nation. For you have failed — but you can hardly be 
aware how completely. ’ ’ 

“Whether or not I’m aware,” I snapped, “seems neg- 
ligible ! Susan feels she must leave me, and she ’ll probably 
act with her usual promptness. Is that what she called 
to tell you?” 

“Partly,” acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her 
soliloquy: “You’ve given her — as you would — a ridiculous 
education. She seems to have instincts, impulses, which — 
all things considered — might have bloomed if cultivated. 
As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the cul- 
ture you’ve crammed upon her, you’ve left her so. She’s 
emancipated — that is, public ; she ’s thrown away the locks 
and keys of her mind. I grant she has one. But appar- 
ently no one has even suggested to her that the essence 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


101 


of being rare, of being fine, is knowing what to omit, what 
to reject, what to conceal. I find my own people, Ambrose 
— and they ’re the right people, the only ones worth finding 
— by feeling secure with them ; I can trust them not to go 
too far. They have decorum, taste. Oh, I admit we’re 
upholding a lost cause! You’re a deserter from it — and 
Miss Blake doesn’t even suspect its existence. Still” — with 
a private smile — “her crudity had certain immediate 
advantages this morning.” 

Ignoring rarity, fineness, I sank to the indecorum of a 
frankly human grin. “In other words, Gertrude, Susan 
omitted so little, went so much too far, that she actually 
forced you for once to get down to brass tacks!” 

Gertrude frowned. “She stripped herself naked before 
a stranger — if that’s what you mean.” 

“With the result, Gertrude?” 

“Ah, that’s why I’m here — as a duty I owe myself. I’m 
bound to say my suspicions were unjust — to Miss Blake, 
at least. I’ll even go beyond that ” 

“Careful, Gertrude! Evil communications corrupt good 
manners. ’ ’ 

“Yes,” she responded quickly, rising, “they do — always; 
that’s why I’m not here to stay. But all I have left for 
you, Ambrose, is this: I’m convinced now that in one 
respect I’ve been quite wrong. Miss Blake convinced me 
this morning that her astounding telegram had at least one 
merit. It happened to be true. I should either live with 
you or set you free. I’ve felt this myself, from time to 
time, but divorce, for many reasons ...” She paused, 
then added: “However, it seems inevitable. If you wish 
to divorce me, you have legal grounds — desertion; I even 
advise it, and I shall make no defense. As for your amaz- 
ing ward — make your mind quite easy about her. If any 
rumors should annoy you, they’ll not come from me. And 
I shall speak to Lucette. ’ ’ She moved to the door, opening 
it slowly. 4 4 That ’s all, I think, Ambrose ? ’ ’ 

4 4 It’s not even a beginning,” I cried. 

4 4 Think of it, rather, as an ending. ’ ’ 


102 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“Impossible! I — I’m abashed, Gertrude! What you 
propose is out of the question. Why not think better of 
returning here? The heydey’s past for both of us. My 
dream — always a wild dream — is passing ; and I can prom- 
ise sincere understanding and respect.” 

“I could not promise so easily,” said Gertrude; “nor so 
much. No ; don ’t come with me, ’ ’ she added. ‘ ‘ I know my 
way perfectly well alone. ’ ’ 

Nevertheless, I went with her to the front door, as I 
ought, in no perfunctory spirit. It was more than a cour- 
teous habit; it was a genuine tribute of admiration. I 
admired her beauty, her impeccable bearing, her frock, her 
furs, her intellect, the ease and distinction of her triumph. 
She left me crushed ; yet it was a privilege to have known 
her — to have wooed her, won her, lost her; and now to 
have received my coup de grace from her competent, dis- 
dainful hands. I wished her well, knowing the wish super- 
fluous. In this, if nothing else, she resembled Susan — 
she did not need me; she could stand alone. It was her 
tragedy, in the French classic manner, that she must. 
Would it also in another manner, in a deeper and — I can 
think of no homelier word — more cosmic sense, prove to be 
Susan ’s ? 

But my own stuffy problem drama, whether tragic or 
absurd, had now reached a crisis and developed its final 
question : How in the absence of Susan to stand at all ? 

XI 

From her interview with Gertrude, Susan went straight 
on to Phil’s rooms, not even stopping to consider the pos- 
sible proprieties involved. But, five minutes before her 
arrival, Phil had been summoned to the Graduates Club 
to receive a long-distance call from his Boston publisher; 
and it was Jimmy Kane who answered her knock and 
opened the study door. He had been in conference with 
Phil on his private problems and Phil had asked him to 
await his return. All this he thought it courteous to ex- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


103 


plain to the peach of a girl before him, whose presence at 
the door puzzled him mightily, and whose disturbing eyes 
held his, he thought, rather too intimately and quizzically 
for a stranger’s. 

She could hardly be some graduate student in philos- 
ophy ; she was too young and too flossy for that. ‘ ‘ Flossy, ’ ’ 
in Jimmy’s economical vocabulary, was a symbol for many 
subtle shades of meaning: it implied, for any maiden it 
fitted, an elegance not too cold to be alluring; the posses- 
sion of that something more than the peace of God which a 
friend told Emerson always entered her heart when she 
knew herself to be well dressed. Flossy — to generalize — 
Jimmy had not observed the women graduate students 
to be, though he bore them no ill will. To be truly flossy 
was, after all, a privilege reserved for a chosen few, born 
to a certain circle which Jimmy had never sought to pene- 
trate. 

One — and a curiously entrancing specimen — of the 
chosen evidently stood watching him now, and he wished 
that her entire self-possession did not so utterly imperil 
his own. What was she doing alone, anyway, this society 
girl — in a students’ rooming house — at Prof. Farmer’s 
door? Why couldn’t she tell him? And why were her 
eyes making fun of him — or weren’t they? His fingers 
went instinctively to his — perhaps too hastily selected? — 
cravat. 

Then Susan really did laugh, but happily, not unkindly, 
and walked on in past him, shutting the door behind her 
as she came. 

“Jimmy Kane,” she said, “if I weren’t so gorgeously 
glad to see you again, I could beat you for not remem- 
bering!” 

‘ ‘ Good Lord ! ” he babbled. 4 ‘ Why — good Lord ! Y ou ’re 
Susan ! ” 

It was all too much for him; concealment was impos- 
sible— he was flabbergasted. Sparkling with sheer delight 
at his gaucherie, Susan put out both hands. Her impul- 
siveness instantly revived him ; he seized her hands for a 


104 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


moment as he might have gripped a long-lost boy friend’s. 

“Yon never guessed I could look so — presentable, did 
you?” demanded Susan. 

“Presentable ! ” The word jarred on him, it was so dully 
inadequate. 

‘ ‘ I have a maid, ’ ’ continued Susan demurely. ‘ ‘ Every- 
thing in Ambo ’s house — Ambo is my guardian, you know ; 
Mr. Hunt — well, everything in his house is a work of art. 
So he pays a maid to see that I am — always. I am simply 
clay in her hands, and it does make a difference. But I 
didn’t have a maid on Birch Street, Jimmy.” 

Jimmy ’s blue eyes capered. This was American humor — 
the kind he was born to and could understand. Happiness 
and ease returned with it. If Susan could talk like that 
while looking like that — well, Susan was there! She was 
all right. 

Within five minutes he was giving her a brief, comradely 
chronicle of the missing years, and when Phil got back it 
was to find them seated together, Susan leaning a little 
forward from the depths of a Morris chair to follow more 
attentively Jimmy’s minute technical description of the 
nature of the steel alloys used in the manufacture of auto- 
mobiles. 

They rose at Phil’s entrance with a mingling, eager 
chatter of explanation. Phil later — much later — admitted 
to me that he had never felt till that moment how damna- 
bly he was past forty, and how fatally Susan was not. He 
further admitted that it was far from the most agreeable 
discovery of a studious life. 

“What do you think, Prof. Farmer,” exclaimed Jimmy, 
“of our meeting again accidentally like this — and me not 
knowing Susan! You can’t beat that much for a small 
world ! ’ ’ 

Phil sought Susan’s eye, and was somewhat relieved by 
the quizzical though delighted gleam in it. 

“Well, Jimmy,” he responded gravely, “truth compels 
me to state that I have heard of stranger encounters — less 
inevitable ones, at least. I really have.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


105 


“But you never heard of a nicer one,” said Susan. 
‘ ‘ Haven ’t I always told you and Ambo that Jimmy would 
be like this?” 

“Sort of foolish?” grinned Jimmy, with reawakening 
constraint. “I’ll bet you have, too.” 

Susan shook her head, solemn and slow; but the corners 
of her mouth meant mischief. 

“No, Jimmy, not foolish; just — natural. Just — sort 
of — you .” 

At this point, Jimmy hastily remembered that he must 
beat it, pleading what Phil knew to be an imaginary recita- 
tion. But he did not escape without finding himself invited 
to dinner for that very evening, informally of course — 
Susan suspected the absence of even a dinner coat: Phil 
would bring him. It was really Phil who accepted for 
him, while Jimmy was still muddling through his thanks 
and toiling on to needless apologies. 

“If I’ve been too” — he almost said “fresh,” but sank 
to — “familiar, calling you by your first name, I mean — 
I wouldn’t like you to think — but coming all of a sudden 
like this, what I mean is ” 

“Oh, run along!” called Susan gayly. “Forget it, 
Jimmy! You’re spoiling everything.” 

“That’s what I m-mean,” stammered Jimmy, and was 
gone. 

“But he does mean well, Susan,” Phil pleaded for him, 
after closing the door. 

It puzzled him to note that Susan’s face instantly 
clouded ; there was reproof in her tone. ‘ ‘ That was patron- 
izing, Phil. I won’t have anybody patronize Jimmy. He’s 
perfect. ’ ’ 

Phil was oddly nettled by this reproof and grew stub- 
born and detached. “He’s a nice boy, certainly; and has 
the makings of a real man. I believe in him. Still — heaven 
knows! — he’s not precisely a subtle soul.” 

Susan’s brow had cleared again. “That’s what I 
m-mean!” she laughed, mimicking Jimmy without satire, 
as if for the pure pleasure of recollection. “The truth is, 


106 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Phil, I’m rather fed up on subtlety — especially my own. 
Sometimes I think it’s just a polite term for futility, with 
a dash of intellectual snobbishness thrown in. It must be 
saner, cleaner, healthier, to take life straight.” 

“And now, Phil dear,” she said, dismissing the matter, 
as if settling back solidly to earth after a pleasantly breath- 
less aerial spin, “I need your advice. Can I earn my 
living as a writer ? I ’ll write anything that pays, so I think 
I can. Fashion notes — anything ! Sister and I ’ ’ — 1 ‘ Sister ’ ’ 
being Susan’s pet name for Miss Goucher — “are running 
away to New York on Monday — to make our fortunes. 
You mustn’t tell Ambo — yet; I’ll tell him in my own way. 
And I must make my own way now, Phil. I ’ve been a lazy 
parasite long enough — too long! So please sit down and 
write me subtle letters of introduction to any publishers 
you know. Maltby is bound to help me, of course. You 
see, I’m feeling ruthless — or shameless; I shall pull every 
wire in sight. So I’m counting on The Garden Exquisite 
for immediate bread and butter. I did my first article for 
it in an hour when I first woke up this morning — just the 
smarty-party piffle its readers and advertisers seem to de- 
mand. 

“This sort of thing, Phil: ‘ The poets are wrong, as 
usual. Wild flowers are not shy and humble, they are 
exclusive. How to know them is still a social problem in 
American life, and very few of us have attained this aristo- 
cratic distinction.’ And so on! Two thousand silly sal- 
able words — and I can turn on that soda-water tap at will. 
Are you listening? Please tell me you don’t think poor 
Sister — she refuses to leave me, and I wouldn’t let her any- 
way — will have to undergo martyrdom in a cheap hall 
bedroom for the rest of her days?” 

Needless to say, Phil did not approve of Susan’s plan. 
He agreed with her that under the given conditions she 
could not remain with me in New Haven; and he com- 
mended her courage, her desire for independence. But 
Susan would never, he felt, find her true pathway to inde- 
pendence, either material or spiritual, as a journalistic 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


107 


free-lance in New York. He admitted the insatiable pub- 
lic thirst for soda-water, but saw no reason why Susan 
should waste herself in catering to it. He was by no means 
certain that she could cater to it if she would. 

“You 11 too often discover,” he warned her, “that your 
tap is running an unmarketable beverage. The mortal 
taste for nectar is still undeveloped ; it remains the drink 
of the gods.” 

“But,” Susan objected, “I can’t let Ambo pay my bills 
from now on — I can’t! And Sister and I must live de- 
cently somehow! I’d like nothing better than to be a 
perpetual fountain of nectar — supposing, you nice old 
Phil, that I’ve ever really had the secret of distilling a 
single drop of it. But you say yourself there’s no market 
for it this side of heaven, which is where we all happen to 
be. What do you want me to do?” 

“Marry me.” 

“It wouldn’t be fair to you, dear.” 

There was a momentary pause. 

‘ ‘ Then, ’ ’ said Phil earnestly, 4 ‘ I want you to let Hunt — 
or if you can’t bring yourself to do that — to let me loan 
you money enough from time to time to live on simply and 
comfortably for a few years, while you study and think 
and write in your own free way — till you’ve found your- 
self. My nectar simile was nonsense, just as your soda- 
water tap was. You have brains and a soul, and the 
combination means a shining career of some kind — even on 
earth. Don’t fritter your genius away in makeshift activ- 
ities. Mankind needs the best we have in us; the best’s 
none too good. It’s a duty — no, it’s more than that — it’s a 
true religion to get that expressed somehow — whether in 
terms of action or thought or beauty. I know, of course, 
you feel this as I do, and mean to win through to it in the 
end. But why handicap yourself so cruelly at the start?” 

Phil tells me that Susan, while he urged this upon her, 
quietly withdrew and did not return for some little time 
after he had ceased to speak. He was not even certain she 
had fully heard him out until she suddenly leaned to him 


108 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

from her chair and gave his hand an affectionate, grateful 
squeeze. 

‘‘Yes, Phil, ,, she said, “it is a religion — it’s perhaps 
the only religion I shall ever have. But for that very rea- 
son I must accept it in my own way. And I’m sure — it’s 
part of my faith — that any coddling now will do me more 
harm that good. I must meet the struggle, Phil — the hand- 
to-hand fight. If the ordinary bread-and-butter conditions 
are too much for me, then I ’m no good and must go under. 
I shan’t be frittering anything away if I fail. I shan’t 
fail — in our sense — unless we’re both mistaken, and there 
isn’t anything real in me. That’s what I must find out 
first — not sheltered and in silence, but down in the scrim- 
mage and noise of it all. If I ’m too delicate for that, then 
I ’ve nothing to give this world, and the sooner I ’m crushed 
out of it the better! Believe me, Phil dear, I know I’m 
right; I know.” 

She was pressing clenched hands almost fiercely between 
her girl ’s breasts as she ended, as if to deny or repress any 
natural longing for a special protection, a special gracious- 
ness and security, from our common taskmaster, life. 

Phil admits that he wanted to whimper like a homesick 
boy. 

xn 

Susan’s informal dinner for Jimmy that evening was 
not really a success. The surface of the water sparkled 
from time to time, but there were grim undercurrents and 
icy depths. Perhaps it was not so bad as my own impres- 
sion of it, for I had a sullen headache pulsing its tiresome 
obbligato above a dull ground base of despair. Despair, I 
am forced to call it. Never had life seemed to me so little 
worth the trouble of going on; and I fancy Phil’s reasoned 
conviction of its eternal dignity and import had become, 
for the present, less of a comfort to him than a curse. 
Moods of this kind, however ruthlessly kept under, infect 
the very air about them. They exude a drab fog to deaden 
spontaneity and choke laughter at its source. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


109 


Neither Phil nor I was guilty of deliberate sulking; 
whether from false pride or native virtue we did our best 
— but our best was abysmal. Even Susan sank under it to 
the flat levels of made conversation, and poor Jimmy — who 
had brought with him many social misgivings — was 
stricken at table with a muscular rigor ; sat stiffly, handled 
his implements jerkily, and ended by oversetting a glass 
of claret and blushing till the dusky red of his face 
matched the spreading stain before him. 

At this crisis of gloom, luckily, Susan struggled clear 
of the drab fog and saved the remnant of the evening — 
at least for Jimmy, plunging with the happiest effect into 
the junior annals of Birch Street, till our heavier Hillhouse 
atmosphere stirred and lightened with Don’t-you-remem<- 
ber’s and Sare-l-do’s. And shortly after dinner, Phil, 
tactfully pleading an unprepared lecture, dragged Jimmy 
off with him before this bright flare-up of youthful remi- 
niscence had even threatened to expire. Their going 
brought Susan at once to my side, with a stricken face of 
self-reproach. 

“It was so stupid of me, Ambo — this dinner. I’ve never 
been more ashamed. How could I have forced it on you 
to-night ! But you were wonderful, dear— wonderful ! So 
was Phil. I’ll never forget it.” There were tears in her 
eyes. “Oh, Ambo,” she wailed, “do you think I shall 
ever learn to be a little like either of you? I feel — abject.” 
Before I could prevent it, she had seized my hand in both 
hers and kissed it. “Homage,” she smiled. . . . 

It broke me down — utterly. . . .You will spare me any 
description of the next ten minutes of childishness. In- 
deed, you must spare me the details of our later under- 
standing; they are inviolable. It is enough to say that I 
emerged from it — for the experience had been overwhelm- 
ing — with a new spirit, a clarified and serener mind. My 
love for Susan was unchanged — yet wholly changed. The 
paradox is exact. Life once more seemed to me good, since 
she was part of it ; and my own life rich, since I now knew 
how truly it had become a portion of hers. She had made 


110 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


me feel, know, that I counted for her — unworthy as I am — 
in all she had grown to be and would grow to be. We had 
shaped and would always shape each other’s lives. There 
for the moment it rested. She would leave me, but I was 
not to be alone. 

No; I was not to be alone. For even if she had died, 
or had quite changed and forsaken me, there would be 
memories — such as few men have been privileged to 
recall. . . . 


INTERLUDE 

On the rearward and gentler slopes of Mount Carmel, 
a rough, isolated little mountain, very abrupt on its south- 
erly face, which rises six or seven miles up-country from 
the New Haven Green, there is an ancient farm, so long 
abandoned as to be completely overgrown with gray birch 
— the old field birch of exhausted soils — with dogwood and 
an aromatic tangle of humbler shrubs, high-bush huckle- 
berry and laurel and sweet fern; while beneath these the 
dry elastic earth-floor is a deep couch of ghost-gray moss, 
shining checkerberry and graceful ground pine. The 
tumbledown farmstead itself lies either unseen at some 
distance from these abandoned fields or has wholly dis- 
appeared along with the neat stone fences that must once 
have marked them. Yet the boundaries of the fields are 
now majestically defined through the undergrowth by rows 
of gigantic red cedars so thickset, so tall, shapely, and 
dense as to resemble the secular cypresses of Italian 
gardens more nearly than the poor relations they ordi- 
narily are. 

And at the upper edge of one steep-lying field, formerly 
an apple orchard — though but three or four of the original 
apple trees remain, hopelessly decrepit and half buried in 
the new growth — the older cedars of the fence line have 
seeded capriciously and have thrown out an almost perfect 
circle of younger, slenderer trees which, standing shoulder 
to shoulder, inclose the happiest retreat for woodland god 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 111 

or dreaming mortal that the most exacting faun or poet 
could desire. 

That Susan should have happened upon this lonely, this 
magic circle, I can never regard as a mere accident. 
Obviously time had slowly and lovingly formed and per- 
fected it for some purpose ; it was there waiting for her — 
and one day she came and possessed it, and the magic circle 
was complete. 

Susan was then seventeen and the season, as it should 
have been, was early May. Much of the hill country lying 
northward from the Connecticut coast towns is surpris- 
ingly wild, and none of it wilder or lovelier than certain 
tracts spread within easy reach of the few New Haveners 
who have not wholly capitulated to business or college 
politics or golf or social service or the movies, forget- 
ting a deeper and saner lure. A later Wordsworth or 
Thoreau might still live in midmost New Haven and never 
feel shut from his heritage, for it neighbors him closely 
— swamp and upland, hemlock cliff and hardwood forest, 
precipitous brook or slow-winding meadow stream, where 
the red- winged blackbirds flute and flash by; the whole 
year’s wonder awaits him; he has but to go forth — alone. 

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her, though 
she so ironically betrays most of us who merely pretend 
to love her, because we feel, after due instruction, that we 
ought. For Nature is not easily communicative, nor 
lightly wooed. She demands a higher devotion than an 
occasional picnic, and will seldom have much to say to you 
if she feels that you secretly prefer another society to hers. 
To her elect she whispers, timelessly, and Susan, in her 
own way, was of the elect. It was the way — the surest — 
of solitary communion; but it was very little, very cas- 
ually, the way of science. She observed much, but without 
method ; and catalogued not at all. She never counted her 
warblers and seldom named them — but she loved them, as 
they slipped northward through young leaves, shyly, with 
pure flashes of green or russet or gold. 

Nature for Susan, in short, was all mood, ranging from 


112 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


cold horror to supernal beauty ; she did not sentimentalize 
the gradations. The cold horror was there and chilled her, 
but the supernal beauty was there too — and did not leave 
her cold. And through it all streamed an indefinable awe, 
a trail one could not follow, a teasing mystery — an 
unspoken word. It was back of — no rather it interpene- 
trated the horror no less than the beauty; they were but 
phases, hints, of that other, that suspected, eerie trail, 
leading one knew not where. 

But surely there, in that magic circle, one might press 
closer, draw oneself nearer, catch at the faintest hint 
toward a possible clue? The aromatic space within the 
cedars became Susan’s refuge, her nook from the world, 
her Port-Royal, her Walden, her Lake Isle of Innisfree. 
Once found that spring she never spoke of it ; she hoarded 
her treasure, slipping off to it stealthily, through slyest 
subterfuge or evasion, whenever she could. For was it not 
hers? 

Sometimes she rode out there, tying her horse to a tree 
in the lowest field back of a great thicket of old-fashioned 
lilac bushes run wild, where he was completely hidden from 
the rare passers-by of the rough up-country road or lane. 
But oftenest, she has since confessed, she would clear her 
morning or afternoon by some plausible excuse for absence, 
then board the Waterbury trolley express, descending from 
it about two miles from her nook, and walking or rather 
climbing up to it crosslots through neglected woodland and 
uncropped pasture reverting to the savage. 

At one point she had to pass a small swampy meadow 
through which a mere thread of stream worked its way, 
half-choked by thick-springing blades of our native wild 
iris; so infinitely, so capriciously delicate in form and hue. 
And here, if these were in bloom, she always lingered a 
while, poised on the harsh hummocks of bent-grass, herself 
slender as a reed. The pale, softly pencilled iris petals 
stirred in her a high wonder beyond speech. What 
supreme, whimsical artistry brought them to being there, 
in that lonely spot; and for whose joy? No human hand, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


113 


cunning with enamel and platinum and treated silver, 
could, after a lifetime of patience, reproduce one petal of 
these uncounted flowers. Out of the muck they lifted, 
ethereal, unearthly — yet so soon to die. . . . 

Oh, she knew what the learned had to say of them! — 
that they were merely sexual devices; painted deceptions 
for attracting insects and so assuring cross-pollination and 
the lusty continuance of their race. So far as it went this 
was unquestionably true; but it went— just how far? 
Their color and secret manna attracted the necessary in- 
sects, which they fed ; the form of their petals and perianth 
tubes, and the arrangement of their organs of sex were 
cunningly evolved, so that the insect that sought their 
nectar bore from one flower to the next its fertilizing 
golden dust 

Astonishing, certainly! But what astonished her far 
more was that all this ingenious mechanism should in any 
way affect her! It was obviously none of her affair; and 
yet to come upon these cunning mechanistic devices in this 
deserted field stirred her, set something ineffable free in 
her — gave it joy for wings. It was as if these pale blooms 
of wild iris had been for her, in a less mortal sense, what 
the unconscious insects were for them — intermediaries , 
whose more ethereal contacts cross-fertilized her very soul. 
But she could not define for herself or express for others 
what they did to her. Of one thing only she was certain : 
These fleeting moments of expansion, of illumination, were 
brief and vague — moments of pure, uncritical feeling — but 
they were the best moments of her life ; and they were real. 
They vanished, but not wholly. They left lasting traces. 
Never to have been visited by them would have condemned 
her, she knew, to be less than her fullest self, narrower in 
sympathy, more rigid, more dogmatic, and less complete. 

But that first May day of her discovery, when called out 
to wander lonely as a cloud by the spirit of spring — the 
day she had happened on her magic circle, — all that rough 
upland world was burgeoning, and the beauty of those 
deserted fields hurt the heart. Susan never easily wept, 


114 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


but that day — safely hidden in the magic circle, then newly 
hers — she threw herself down on the ghost-gray moss 
among the spicy tufts of sweet fern and enjoyed, as she 
later told me, the most sensuously abandoned good cry of 
her life. The dogwood trees were a glory of flushed white 
about her, shining in on every hand through the black- 
green cedars, as if the stars had rushed forward toward 
earth and clustered more thickly in a nearer midnight sky. 
Life had no right to be so overwhelmingly fair — if these 
poignant gusts of beauty gave no sanction to all that the 
bruised heart of man might long for of peace and joy! 
If life must be accepted as an idiot’s tale, signifying noth- 
ing, then it was a refinement of that torture that it could 
suddenly lift — as a sterile wave lifts only to break — to such 
dizzying, ecstatic heights. . . . No, no — it was impossible! 
It was unthinkable ! It was absurd ! 

That year we spent July, August, and early September 
in France, but late September found us back in New Haven 
for those autumnal weeks which are the golden, heady wine 
of our New England cycle. Praise of the New England 
October, for those who have experienced it, must always 
seem futile, and for those who have not, exaggerated and 
false. Summer does not decay in New England; it first 
smoulders and then flares out in a clear multicolored glory 
of flame; it does not sicken to corruption, it shouts and 
sings and is transfigured. I had suggested to Susan, there- 
fore, a flight to higher hills — to the Berkshires, to be pre- 
cise — where we might more spaciously watch these smoke- 
less frost-fires flicker up, spread, consume themselves, and 
at last leap from the crests, to vanish rather than die. But 
Susan, pleading a desire to settle down after much wander- 
ing, begged off. She did not tell me that she had a private 
sanctuary, too long unvisited, hidden among nearer and 
humbler hills. 

The rough fields of the old farm were now rich with 
crimson and gold— bright yellow gold, red gold, green and 
tarnished gold — or misted over with the horizon blue of 
wild asters, a needed softening of tone in a world else so 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


115 


vibrant with light, so nakedly clear. This was another and 
perhaps even a deeper intoxication than that of the flood 
tide of spring. Unbearably beautiful it grew at its climax 
of splendor! An unseen organist unloosed all his stops, 
and Susan, like a little child overpowered by that rocking 
clamor, was shaken by it and almost whimpered for 
mercy. . . . 

It was not until the following spring that chance im- 
probably betrayed her guarded secret to me. All during 
the preceding fall I had wondered at times that I found 
it so increasingly difficult to arrange for afternoons of 
tennis or golf or riding with Susan; but I admonished 
myself that as she grew up she must inevitably find per- 
sonal interests and younger friends, and it was not for me 
to limit or question her freedom. And though Susan never 
lied to me, she was clever enough, and woman enough, to 
let me mislead myself. 

* 4 I’ve been taking a long walk, Ambo.” “I’ve been 
riding. ’ ’ 

Well, bless her, so she had — and why shouldn’t she? 
Though it came at last with me to a vague, comfortless 
feeling of shut-outness — of too often missing an undefined 
something that I had hoped to share. 

During a long winter of close companionship in study 
and socially unsocial life this feeling disappeared, but with 
the spring it gradually formed again, like a little spread- 
ing cloud in an empty sky. And one afternoon, toward 
middle May, I discovered myself to be unaccountably alone 
and wishing Susan were round — so we could “do some- 
thing.” The day was a day apart. Mummies that day, in 
dim museums, ached in their cerements. Middle-aged bank 
clerks behind grilles knew a sudden unrest, and one or two 
of them even wondered whether to be always honestly 
handling the false counters of life were any compensation 
for never having riotously lived. Little boys along Hill- 
house Avenue, ordinarily well-behaved, turned freakishly 
truculent, delighted in combat, and pummelled each other 
with ineffective fists. Settled professors in classrooms were 


116 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


seized with irrelevant fancies and, while trying to recover 
some dropped thread of discourse, openly sighed — haunted 
by visions of the phoebe bird’s nest found under the old 
bridge by the mill dam, or of the long-forgotten hazel eyes 
of some twelve-year-old sweetheart. A rebellious day — 
and a sentimental! [See Lord Tennyson, and the poets, 
passim.] The apple trees must be in full bloom. . . . 

Well then, confound it, why had Susan gone to a public 
lecture on Masefield? Or had she merely mentioned at 
lunch that there was a public lecture on Masefield? Oh, 
damn it ! One can ’t stay indoors on such a day ! 

Susan and I kept our saddle horses at the local riding 
academy, where they were well cared for and exercised on 
the many days when we couldn’t or did not wish to take 
them out. As the academy was convenient and had good 
locker rooms and showers, we always preferred changing 
there instead of dressing at home and having the horses 
sent round. Riding is not one of my passions, and oddly 
enough is not one of Susan’s. That intense sympathy 
which unites some men and women to horses, and others 
to dogs or cats, is either born in one or it is not. Susan 
felt it very strongly for both dogs and cats, and if I have 
failed to mention Tumps and Togo, that is a lack in myself, 
not in her. I don’t dislike dogs or cats or, for that matter, 
well-brQken horses, but — though I lose your last shreds of 
sympathy — they all, in comparison with other interests, 
leave me more than usual calm. Of Tumps and Togo, 
nevertheless, something must yet be said, though too late 
for their place in Susan ’s heart ; or indeed, for their own 
deserving. But they are already an intrusion here. 

For Alma, her dainty little single footer, Susan ’s feeling 
was rather admiration than love. Just as there are poets 
whose songs we praise, but whose genius does not seem to 
knit itself into the very fabric of our being, so it was with 
Alma and Susan. She said and thought nothing but good 
of Alma, yet never felt lonely away from her — the infalli- 
ble test. As for Jessica, my own modest nag, I fear she 
was very little more to me than an agreeably paced induce- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


117 


ment to exercise, and I fear I was little more to her than 
a possible source of lump sugar and a not-too-fretful hand 
on the bridle reins. To-day, however, I needed her as a 
more poetic motor; failing Susan ’s companionship, I 
wanted to be carried far out into country byways apart 
from merely mechanical motors or — ditto — men. 

Jessica, well up to it, offered no objections to the plan, 
and we were soon trotting briskly along the aerial Ridge 
Road, from which we at length descended to the dark east- 
ern flank of Mount Carmel. It would mean a long pull 
to go right round the mountain by the steep back road, and 
I had at first no thought of attempting it; but the swift 
remembrance of a vast cherry orchard bordering that road 
made me wonder whether its blossoms had yet fallen. 
When I determined finally to push on, poor Jessica’s 
earlier fire had cooled; we climbed the rough back road 
as a slug moves ; the cherry orchard proved disappointing ; 
and the sun was barely two hours from the hills when we 
crossed the divide and turned south down a grass-grown 
wood road that I had never before traveled. I hoped, and 
no doubt Jessica hoped, it might prove a shorter cut home. 

What it did prove was so fresh an enchantment of young 
leaf and flashing wing, that I soon ceased to care where it 
led or how late I might be for dinner. Then a sharp dip 
in the road brought a new vision of delight; dogwood — 
cloudy masses of pink dogwood, the largest, deepest-tinted 
trees of it I had ever seen ! It caught at my throat ; and 
I reined in Jessica, whose aesthetic sense was less developed, 
and stared. But presently the spell was broken. An unseen 
horse squealed, evidently from behind a great lilac thicket 
in an old field at the left, and Jessica squealed back, in- 
stantly alert and restive. The sharp whinnying was 
repeated, and Jessica’s dancing excitement grew intense; 
then there was a scuffling commotion back of the lilacs and 
to my final astonishment Susan ’s little mare, Alma, having 
broken her headstall and wrenched herself free of bit and 
bridle, came trotting amicably forth to join her old friends 


118 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


— which she could easily do, as the ancient cattle bars at 
the field-gate had long since rotted away. 

It was unmistakably dainty Alma with her white fore- 
head star — but where was her mistress? A finger of ice 
drew slowly along my spine as I urged Jessica into the 
field and round the lilac thicket. Alma meekly followed 
us, softly breathing encouragement through pink nostrils, 
and my alarm quieted when I found nothing more dread- 
ful than the broken bridle still dangling from the branch 
of a dead cedar. It was plain that Susan had tied Alma 
there to explore on foot through the higher fields; it was 
plain, too, that she must have preferred to ride out here 
alone, and had been at some pains to conceal her purpose. 

For a second, so piqued was I, I almost decided to ride 
on and leave the willful child to her own devices. But the 
broken bridle shamed me. I dismounted to examine it; it 
could be held together safely enough for the return, I saw, 
with a piece of stout twine, and there was certain to be a 
habitation with a piece of stout twine in it on down the 
road somewhere. Susan must have come that way and 
could tell me. But I must find her first, . . . 

‘‘Susan!” I called. “ Oh-ho-o-o ! Soo-san!” 

No answer. I called again — vainly. Nothing for it, 
then, but a search ! I tethered Jessica to the cedar stump, 
convinced that Alma wouldn’t wander far from her old 
friend, and started off through the field past a senile apple 
tree bearing a few scattered blossoms, beyond which a 
faintly suggested path seemed to lead upward through a 
wonder-grove of the pink dogwood, mingled with laurel 
and birch and towering cedars. That path, I knew, would 
have tempted Susan. 

What there was of it soon disappeared altogether in an 
under-thicket of high-bush huckleberry, taller than a man’s 
head. Through this I was pushing my way, and had 
stooped to win past some briers and protect my eyes — when 
I felt a silk scarf slip across them, muffling my face. 

It was swiftly knotted from behind; then my hand was 
taken, and Susan’s voice — on a tone of blended mischief 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 119 

and mystery — quavered at my ear: 4 ‘Hush! Profane 
mortal — speak not! This is holy ground.’ ’ 

With not another word spoken she drew me after her, 
guiding me to freer air and supporting me when I stum- 
bled. We continued thus for some moments, on my part 
clumsily enough; and then Susan halted me, and turned 
me solemnly round three times, while she crooned in a 
weird gypsy-like singsong the following incantation: 

Cedar , cedar, birch and fern, 

Turn his wits as mine you turn. 

If he sees what now I see 
Welcome shall this mortal be. 

If he sees it not, I’ll say 
Crick-crack and vanish May! 

But I must have seen! My initiation was pronounced 
successful. From that hour all veils were withdrawn, and 
I was made free of the magic circle. . . . 

It was a dip in Lethe. Dinner was forgotten — the long 
miles home and the broken bridle. A powerful enchant- 
ment had done its work. For me, only the poised moment 
of joy was real. Nothing else mattered, nothing else 
existed, while that poised fragile moment was mine. We 
talked or were silent — it was all one. And when dusk 
crept in, and a grateful wood-thrush praised it, we still 
lingered to join in that praise. . . . Then a whippoorwill 
began to call insistently, grievously, from very far off. It 
was the whippoorwill that shattered my poised crystal 
moment of perfect joy. 

“Those poor horses,” I said. 

“Oh!” cried Susan, springing up, “how could we let 
them starve ! I ’m starved, too, Ambo — aren ’t you ? What 
sillies we are!” 

We got home safely, after some trifling difficulties, past 
ten o’clock. . . . 


120 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


When the lamp is shattered 
The light in the dust lies dead 

Only it doesn’t, always — thank God! Memories. . . . 
And this was but one. Oh, no; I was not to be alone. I 
should never really be alone. . . . 

xm 

The morning after Jimmy had dined with us, Susan, 
at my request, brought Miss Goucher to my study, and 
we had a good long talk together. And first of all the prob- 
lem of Gertrude loomed before us, starting up ghostlike 
at a chance remark, and then barring all progress with 
more practical considerations, till laid. Neither Susan’s 
telegram nor her private interview with Gertrude had been 
discussed between us ; I had nervously shied off from both 
matters in my dread of seeming to question Susan’s 
motives. But now Susan herself, to put it crudely, insisted 
on a show-down. 

‘ ‘ The air needed clearing, Ambo, and I sent the telegram 
hoping to clear it by raising a storm. But, as Sister re- 
minded me at breakfast, storms don’t always clear the air 
— even good hard ones; they sometimes leave it heavier 
than ever. I’m afraid that’s what my storm has done. 
Has it, Ambo? What happened when Mrs. Hunt came to 
see you here? But perhaps I ought to tell you first what 
happened between us ? ” 

“No,” I smiled; “Gertrude made that fairly plain, for 
once. And your storm did sweep off the worst of the fog! 
You see, Gertrude has, intensely, the virtues of her defects 
— a fastidious sense of honor among them. Once she felt 
her suspicions unjust, she was bound to acknowledge it. I 
can’t say you won a friend, but you did — by some miracle 
— placate a dangerous foe.” 

“Is she coming back to you, Ambo?” 

* ‘ No. She suggests divorce. But that of course is impos- 
sible!” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


121 


“Why?” 

“Is it kind to ask?” said Miss Gouclier. “And — forgive 
me, dear — after your decision, is it necessary for you to 
know ? ’ ’ 

Susan reflected anxiously. “No,” she finally responded, 
“it isn’t kind; but it is necessary. I’ll tell you why, 
Ambo. If you had been free, I think there’s no doubt I 
should have married you. Oh, I know, dear, it sounds cold- 
blooded like that ! But the point is, I shouldn ’t then have 
questioned things as I do now. My feeling for you — your 
need of me — they wouldn ’t have been put to the test. Now 
they have been — or rather, they’re being tested, every min- 
ute of every hour. Suppose I should ask you now — meaning 
every word of it — to divorce Mrs. Hunt so you could marry 
me ? At least you ’d know then, wouldn ’t you, that simply 
being yours meant more to me than anything else in life? 
Or suppose I couldn ’t bring myself to ask it, but couldn ’t 
face life without you? Suppose I drowned myself ” 

“Good God, dear!” 

“I’m not going to, Ambo — and what’s equally impor- 
tant, neither are you. Why, you don’t even pause over 
Mrs. Hunt’s suggestion! You don’t even wait to ask my 
opinion! You say at once — it’s impossible! That proves 
something, doesn ’t it — about you and me ? It either proves 
we’re not half so much in love as we think we are, or else 
that love isn ’t for either of us the only good thing in life — 
the whole show.” She paused, but added: “Why can’t 
you consider divorcing Mrs. Hunt, Ambo? After all, she 
isn ’t honestly your wife and doesn ’t want to be ; it would 
only be common fairness to yourself.” 

Miss Goucher stirred uneasily in her chair. I stirred 
uneasily in mine. 

“There are so many reasons,” I fumbled. “I suppose 
at bottom it comes to this — a queer feeling of responsi- 
bility, of guilt even. ...” 

* ‘ Nonsense ! ’ ’ cried Susan. “You never could have satis- 
fied her, Ambo. You weren’t born to be human, but some- 
how, in spite of everything, you just are! It’s your worst 


122 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


fault in Mrs. Hunt’s eyes. Mrs. Hunt shouldn’t have mar- 
ried a man ; she should have married a social tradition ; an 
abstract idea.” 

“How could she?” asked Miss Goucher. 

“Easily,” said Susan; “she’s one herself, so there must 
be others. It’s hard to believe, but apparently abstractions 
like that do get themselves incarnated now and then. I 
never met one before — in the flesh. It gave me a creepy 
feeling — like shaking hands with the fourth dimension or 
asking the Holy Roman Empire to dinner. But I don’t 
pretend to make her out, Ambo. Why did she leave you? 
It seems the very thing an incarnate social tradition could 
never have brought herself to do!” 

Before I could check myself I reproved her. “You’re 
not often merely cruel, Susan ! ’ ’ Then, hoping to soften 
it, I hurried on: “You see, dear, Gertrude isn’t greatly 
to blame. Suppose you had been born and brought up like 
her, to believe beauty and brains and a certain gracious 
way of life a family privilege, a class distinction. Don’t 
you see how your inbred worship of class and family 
would become in the end an intenser form of worshipping 
yourself? Gertrude was taught to live exclusively, from 
girlhood, in this disguised worship of her own perfections. 
We’re all egotists of course; but most of us are the com- 
mon or garden variety, and have an occasional suspicion 
that we ’re pretty selfish and intolerant and vain. Gertrude 
has never suspected it. How could she? A daughter of 
her house can do no wrong — and she is a daughter of her 
house.” I sighed. 

“Unluckily, my power of unreserved admiration has 
bounds, and my tongue and temper sometimes haven’t. So 
our marriage dissolved in an acid bath compounded of 
honest irritations and dishonest apologies. I made the dis- 
honest apologies. To do Gertrude justice, she never apolo- 
gized. She knew the initial fault was mine. I shouldn’t 
have joined a church whose creed I couldn’t repeat without 
a sensation of moral nausea. That’s just what I did when 
I married Gertrude. There was no deception on her side, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


123 


either. I knew her gods, and I knew she assumed that 
mine were the same as hers, and that I was humbly enter- 
ing the service of their dedicated priestess. Well, I aposta- 
tized — to her frozen amazement. Then a crisis came — 
insignificant enough. . . . Gertrude refused to call with 
me on the bride of an old friend of mine, because she 
thought it a misalliance. He had no right, she held, under 
her jealous gods, to bring a former trained nurse home as 
his wife, and thrust her upon a society that would never 
otherwise have received her. 

“I was furious, and blasphemed her gods. I insisted 
she should either accompany me, then and there, or I’d go 
myself and apologize for her — yes, these are the words I 
used — her ‘congenital lunacy.’ She left me like a statue 
walking, and went to her room.” 

“And you?” asked Susan. 

“I made the call.” 

‘ ‘ Did you make the apology ? ’ ’ 

“No; I couldn’t.” 

‘ ‘ Naturally not, ’ ’ assented Miss Goucher. 

“Oh, Ambo,” protested Susan, “what a coward you 
are! Well, and then?” 

“I returned to a wifeless house. From that hour until 
yesterday morning there have been no explanations be- 
tween Gertrude and me. Gertrude is superb.” 

“I understand her less than ever,” said Susan. 

“I understand her quite well,” said Miss Goucher. 
“But your long silence, Mr. Hunt — that I can’t under- 
stand.” 

“I can,” Susan exclaimed. “Ambo’s very bones dislike 
her. So do mine. Do you remember how I used to shock 
you, Ambo, when I first came here — saying somebody or 
other was no damn good? Well, I can’t help it; it’s 
stronger than I am. Mrs. Hunt’s no ” 

“Oh, child!” struck in Miss Goucher. “How much you 
have still to learn ! ’ ’ Then she addressed me: “I ’ve never 
seen a more distinguished person than Mrs. Hunt. I know 
it’s odd, coming from me, but somehow I sympathize with 


124 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


her — greatly. I’ve always ” — hesitated Miss Goucher — 
“been a proud sort of nobody myself.” 

Susan reached over and slipped her hand into Miss 
Goucher ’s. “Poor Sister! Just as we're going off together 
you begin to find out how horrid I can be. But 111 make 
a little true confession to both of you. What I ’ve been say- 
ing about Mrs. Hunt isn’t in the least what I think about 
her. The fact is, I’m jealous of her, in so many ways — 
except in the ordinary way! To make a clean breast of 
it, when I was with her she brought me to my knees in spite 
of myself. Oh, I acknowledge her power! It’s uncanny. 
How did you ever find strength to resist it, Ambo? My 
outbreak was sheer Birch Street bravado — a cheap insult 
flung in the face of the unattainable ! It was all my short- 
comings throwing mud at all her disdain. Truly! Why, 
the least droop of her eyelids taught me that it takes more 
than quick wits and sensitive nerves and hard study to 
overcome a false start — or rather, no start at all ! 

“Birch Street isn’t even a beginning, because, so far as 
Mrs. Hunt’s concerned, Birch Street simply doesn’t exist! 
And even Birch Street would have to admit that she gets 
away with it ! I’d say so, too, if I didn ’t go a step farther 
and feel that it gets away with her. That’s why ridicule 
can’t touch her. You can’t laugh at a devotee, a woman 
possessed, the instrument of a higher power! Mrs. Hunt’s 
a living confession of faith in the absolute rightness of the 
right people, and a living rebuke to the incurable wrong- 
ness of the wrong! Oh, I knew at once what you meant, 
Ambo, when you called her a dedicated priestess ! It ’s the 
way I shall always think of her — ritually clothed, and 
pouring out tea to her gods from sacred vessels of colonial 
silver! You can smile, Ambo, but I shall; and way down 
in my common little Birch Street heart, I believe I shall 
always secretly envy her. ... So there!” 

For the first time in my remembrance of her, Miss 
Goucher laughed out loud. Her laugh — in effect, not in 
resonance — was like cockcrow. We all laughed together, 
and Gertrude vanished. . . . But ten minutes later found 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


125 


us with knit brows again, locked in debate. Susan had at 
length seized courage to tell me that when she left my 
house she must, once and for all, go it completely alone. 
She could no longer accept my financial protection. She 
was to stand on her own feet, for better or worse, richer or 
poorer, in sickness or in health. This staggering proposal 
I simply could not listen to calmly, and would not yield to ! 
It was too preposterously absurd. 

Yet I made no headway with my objections, until I 
stumbled upon the one argument that served me and led 
to a final compromise. “Dear," I had protested, really 
and deeply hurt by Susan's stubborn stand for absolute 
independence, “can't you feel how cruelly unkind all this 
is to me?" 

“Oh," she wailed, “unkind? Why did you say that! 
Surely, Ambo, you don’t mean it! Unkind?" 

I was quick to press my advantage. “ When you ask me 
to give up even the mere material protection of my family ? 
You are my family, Susan — all the family I shall ever 
have. I don’t want to be maudlin about it. I don’t wish 
to interfere with your freedom to develop your own life in 
your own way. But it’s beyond my strength not to plead 
that all that’s good in my life is bound up with yours. 
Please don’t ask me to live in daily and hourly anxiety 
over your reasonable comfort and health. There’s no com- 
mon sense in it, Susan. It’s fantastic ! And it is unkind ! ’’ 

Susan could not long resist this plea, for she felt its 
wretched sincerity, even if she knew — as she later told me 
— that I was making the most of it. It was Miss Goucher 
who suggested our compromise. 

“Mr. Hunt," she said, “my own arrangement with 
Susan is this: We are to pool our resources, and I am to 
make a home for her, just as if I were her own mother. 
I’ve been able to save, during the past twenty-five years, 
about eight thousand dollars; it’s well invested, I think, 
and brings me in almost five hundred a year. This is what 
we were to start with ; and Susan feels certain she can earn 
at least two thousand dollars a year by her .pen. I know 


126 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


nothing of the literary market, but I haven’t counted on 
her being able to earn so much — for a year or so, at least. 
On the other hand, I feel certain Susan will finally make 
her way as a writer. So I’d counted on using part of my 
capital for a year or two if necessary. We plan to live 
very simply for the present, of course — but without hard- 
ship.” 

“ Still ” I would have protested, if for once Miss 

Goucher had not waived all deference, sailing calmly on: 

“As Susan has told you, she’s convinced that she needs 
the assurance of power and self-respect to be gained by 
meeting life without fear or favor and making her own 
career in the face of whatever difficulties arise. There’s a 
good deal to be said for that, Mr. Hunt — more than you 
could be expected to understand. Situated as you have 
always been, I mean. But naturally, as Susan’s guar- 
dian, you can’t be expected to stand aside if for any 
reason we fail in our attempt. I see that; and Susan sees 
it now, I’m sure. Yet I really feel I must urge you to let 
us try. And I promise faithfully to keep you informed as 
to just how we are getting on.” 

“Please, Ambo,” Susan chimed in, “let us try. If things 
go badly I won’t be unreasonable or stubborn — indeed I 
won’t. Please trust me for that. I’ll even go a step 
farther than Sister. I won’t let her break into her sav- 
ings — not one penny. If it ever comes to that, I’ll come 
straight to you. And for the immediate present, I have 
over five hundred dollars in my bank account ; and ’ ’ — she 
smiled — “I’ll try to feel it’s honestly mine. You’ve spent 
heaven knows how much on me', Ambo; though it’s the 
least of all you ’ve done for me and been to me ! But now, 
please let me see whether I could ever have made anything 
of myself if I hadn’t been so shamelessly lucky — if life had 
treated me as it treats most people. . . . Jimmy, for in- 
stance. ... He hasn’t needed help, Ambo; and I simply 
must know whether he’s a better man than I am, Gunga 
Dhin ! Don ’t you see ? ” 

Yes; I flatter myself that I did, more or less mistily, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 127 

begin to see. Thus our morning conference drew to its 
dreary, amicable close. 

But from the door Susan turned back to me with tragic 
eyes: “Ambo — I’m caring. It does — hurt.” And since I 
could not very safely reply, she attempted a smile. ‘ 1 Ambo 
— what is to become of poor Tumps? Togo will have to 
come; I can’t reduce him to atheism. But Tumps would 
die in New York; and he never has believed in God any- 
way! Can you make a martyr of yourself for his surly 
sake ? Can you ? Just to see, I mean, that he gets his milk 
every day and fish heads on Friday? Can you, dear?” 

I nodded and turned away. . . . The door closed so quietly 
that I first knew when the latch ticked once how fortu- 
nately I was alone. 

xiv 

Maltby Phar was responsible for Togo; he had given 
him — a little black fluff-ball with shoe-button eyes — to 
Susan, about six months after she first came to live with 
me. Togo is a Chow ; and a Chow is biologically classified 
as a dog. But if a Chow is a dog, then a Russian sable 
muff is a dish rag. Your Chow — black, smoke blue, or red 
— is a creation apart. He is to dogdom what Hillhouse 
Avenue is to Birch Street — the wrong end, bien entendu. 
His blood is so blue that his tongue is purple; and, like 
Susan’s conception of Gertrude, he is a living confession 
of faith in the rightness of the right people, a living re- 
buke to the wrongness of the wrong ; the right people being, 
of course, that master god or mistress goddess whom he 
worships, with their immediate entourage. No others need 
apply for even cursory notice, much less respect. 

I am told they eat Chows in China, their native land. 
If they do, it must be from the motive that drove Plu- 
tarch’s Athenian to vote the banishment of Aristides — 
ennui, to wit, kindling to rage; he had wearied to mad- 
ness of hearing him always named “the Just.” Back, too, 
in America — for I write from France — there will one day 
be proletarian reprisals against the Chow; for in the art 


128 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


of cutting one dead your Chow is supreme. He goes by 
you casually, on tiptoe, with the glazed eye of indiffer- 
ence. He sees you and does not see you — and will not. 
You may cluck, you may whistle, you may call; interest 
will not excite him, nor flattery move him; he passes; he 
“goes his unremembering way.” But let him beware! 
If Americans are slow to anger, they are terrible when 
roused. I have frequently explained this to Togo — more 
for Susan’s sake than his own — and been yawned at for 
my pains. 

Personally, I have no complaint to make. In Togo’s 
eyes I am one of the right people. He has always treated 
me with a certain tact, though with a certain reserve. 
Only to Susan does he prostrate himself with an almost 
mystical ecstasy of devotion. Only for her does his feath- 
ered tail-arc quiver, do his ears lie back, his calm ebon lips 
part in an unmistakably adoring smile. But there is much 
else, I admit, to be said for him; he never barks his deep 
menacing bark without cause; and as a mere oh jet d’art, 
when well combed, he is superb. Ming porcelains are 
nothing to him; he is perhaps the greatest decorative 
achievement of the unapproachably decorative East. . . . 

But for Tumps, my peculiar legacy, I have nothing good 
to say and no apologies to offer. Like Calverley’s parrot, 
he still lives — “he will not die.” Tumps is a tomcat. And 
not only is he a tomcat, he is a hate-scarred noctivagant, 
owning but an ear and a half, and a poor third of tail. His 
design was botched at birth, and has since been degraded ; 
his color is unpleasant; his expression is ferocious — and 
utterly sincere. He has no friends in the world but Susan 
and Sonia, and Sonia cannot safely keep him with her 
because of the children. 

Out of the night he came, shortly after Togo ’s arrival ; 
starved for once into submission and dragging himself 
across the garden terrace to Susan’s feet. And she ac- 
cepted this devil’s gift, this household scourge. I never 
did, nor did Togo; but we were finally subdued by fear. 
Those baleful eyes cursing us from dim corners — Togo* 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


129 


Togo, shall we ever forget them! Separately or together, 
we have more than once failed to enter a dusky room, 
toward twilight, where those double phosphors burned from 
your couch corner or out from beneath my easy-chair. 

But nothing would move Susan to give Tumps up so 
long as he cared to remain ; and Tumps cared. Small won- 
der! Nursed back to health and rampageous vivacity, he 
soon mastered the neighborhood, peopled it with his ill- 
favored offspring, and wailed his obscene balladry to the 
moon. Hillhouse Avenue protested, en bloc. The Misses 
Carstairs, whose slumbers had more than once been post- 
poned, and whose white Persian, Desdemona, had been 
debauched, threatened traps, poison and the law. Profes- 
sor Emeritus Gillingwater attempted murder one night 
with a .22 rifle, but only succeeded in penetrating the glass 
roof of his neighbor ’s conservatory. 

Susan was unmoved, defending her own; she would not 
listen to any plea, and she mocked at reprisals. Those were 
the early days of her coming, when I could not force my- 
self to harsh measures; and happily Tumps, having lost 
some seven or eight lives, did with the years grow more 
sedate, though no more amiable. But the point is, he 
stayed — and, I repeat, lives to this hour on my distant, 
grudging bounty. 

Such was the charge lightly laid upon me. . . . 

Oh, Susan — Susan ! For once, resentment will out ! 
May you suffer, shamed to contrition, as you read these 
lines! Tumps — and I say it now boldly — is “no damn 
good.” 

xv 

I am clinging to this long chapter as if I were still cling- 
ing to Susan’s hand on the wind-swept station platform, 
hoarding time by infinitesimally split seconds, dreading 
her inevitable escape. Phil — by request, I suspect — did 
not come down; and Susan forbade me to enter the train 
with her, having previously forbidden me to accompany 
her to town. Togo was forward, amid crude surroundings, 


130 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


riling the brakemen with his disgusted disdain. Miss 
Goucher had already said a decorous but sincerely' felt 
good-by, and had taken her place inside. 

“Let’s not be silly, Ambo,” Susan whispered. “After 
all, you’ll be down soon — won’t you? You’re always run- 
ning to New York.” 

Then, unexpectedly, she snatched her hand from mine, 
threw her arms tight round my neck, and for a reckless 
public moment sobbed and kissed me. With that she was 
gone. ... I turned, too, at once, meaning flight from the 
curious late-comers pressing toward the car steps. One 
of them distinctly addressed me. 

“Good morning, Ambrose. Don’t worry about your 
charming little ward. She’ll be quite safe — away from 
you. I’ll keep a friendly eye on her going down.” 

It was Lucette. 


THE FOURTH CHAPTER 


i 

I HAD a long conference with Phil the day after Susan ’s 
departure, and we solemnly agreed that we must, 
within reasonable limits, give Susan a clear field; her de- 
sire to play a lone hand in the cut-throat poker game called 
life must be, so far as possible, respected. But we sneak- 
ingly evaded any definition of our terms. “Within reason- 
able limits “so far as possible” — the vagueness of these 
phrases will give you the measure of our secret duplicity. 

Meanwhile we lived on from mail delivery to mail de- 
livery, and Susan proved a faithful correspondent. There 
is little doubt, I think, that .the length and frequency of her 
letters constituted a deliberate sacrifice of energy and time, 
laid — not reluctantly, but not always lightly — on the altar 
of affection. It was a genuine, yet must often have been 
an arduous piety. To write full life-giving letters late at 
night, after long hours of literary labor, is no trifling 
effort of good will — good wall, in this instance, to two of 
the loneliest, forlornest of men. Putting aside the mere 
anodyne of work we had but one other effective consolation 
— Jimmy ; our increasing interest and joy in Jimmy. But, 
for me at least, this was not an immediate consolation ; my 
taste for Jimmy’s prosaic companionship was very gradu- 
ally acquired. 

Our first word from Susan was a day letter, telephoned 
to me from the telegraph office, though I at once demanded 
the delivery of a verbatim copy by messenger. Here it is : 

“At grand central safe so far new york lies roaring just 
beyond sister and togo tarry with the stuff near cab stand 
while 1 send . Love Mrs. Arthur snooped in vain now for 
it courage Susan whos afraid dont you be alonsen fan.” 

1 131 


132 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Phil, the scholar, interpreted the last two verbatim sym- 
bols: “ Allons, enfants!” 

n 

Susan to Me 

‘ 1 Sister and I are at the nice old mid-Victorian Brevoort 
House for three or four days. Sister is calmly and cour- 
ageously hunting rooms for us — or, if not rooms, a room. 
She hopes for the plural. We like this quarter of town. 
It’s near enough publishers and things for walking, and 
it’s not quite so New Yorky as some others. What Sis- 
ter is trying to avoid for us is slavery to the Subway, 
which is awful ! But we may have to fly up beyond Colum- 
bia, or even to the Bronx, before we’re through. The hotel 
objected to Togo, but I descended to hitherto untried depths 
of feminine wheedle — and justified them by getting my 
way. Sister blushed for me — and herself — but has since 
felt more confident about my chances for success in this 
wickedly opportunist world. 

“Better skip this part if you read extracts to Phil; he’ll 
brood. But perhaps you’d better begin disillusioning him 
at once, for I’m discovering dreadful possibilities in my 
nature — now the Hillhouse inhibitions seem remote. New 
York, one sees overnight, is no place for a romantic ideal- 
ist — Maltby’s phrase, not mine, bless Phil’s heart! — but 
luckily I ’ve never been one. Birch Street is going to stand 
me in good stead down here. New York is Birch Street 
on a slightly exaggerated scale ; Hillhouse Avenue is some- 
thing entirely different. Finer too, perhaps ; but the 
world’s future has its roots in New Birch Street. I began 
to feel that yesterday during my first hunt for a paying 
job. 

“I’ve plunged on shop equipment, since Jimmy says, 
other things being equal, the factory with the best tools wins 
—that is, I’ve bought a reliable typewriter, and I tackled 
my first two-finger exercises last night. The results were 
dire — mostly interior capitals and extraneous asterisks. I 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


133 


shan’t have patience to take proper five-finger lessons. 
Sister vows she’s going to master the wretched thing too, 
so she can help with copying now and then. There’s a 
gleam in her eye, dear — wonderful ! This is to be her great 
adventure as well as mine. ‘Susan, Sister & Co., Unli- 
censed Hacks — Piffle While You Wait!’ Oh, we shall get 
on — you’ll see. Still, I can’t truthfully report much prog- 
ress yesterday or to-day, though a shade more to-day than 
yesterday. I’ve been counting callously on Maltby, as 
Phil disapprovingly knows, and I brought three short 
manufactured-m-advance articles for the Garden Ex. down 
with me. So my first step was to stifle my last maidenly 
scruple and take them straight to Maltby; I hoped they 
would pay at least for the typewriter. It was a clear ice- 
bath of a morning, and the walk up Fifth Avenue braced 
me for anything. I stared at everybody and a good many 
unattached males stared back; sometimes I rather liked 
it, and sometimes not. It all depends. 

“But I found the right building at last, somewhere be- 
tween the Waldorf and the Public Library. There’s a 
shop on its avenue front for the sale of false pearls, and 
judging from the shop they must be more expensive than 
real ones. Togo dragged me in there at first by mistake ; 
and as I was wearing my bestest tailor-made and your furs, 
and as Togo was wearing his. plus his haughtiest atmos- 
phere, we seemed between us to be just the sort of thing the 
languid clerks had been waiting for. There was a hopeful 
stir as we entered — no, swept in! I was really sorry to 
disappoint them ; it was horrid to feel that we couldn ’t live 
up to their expectations. 

“We didn’t sweep out nearly so well! But we found 
the elevator round the corner and were taken up four or 
five floors, passing a designer of de luxe corsets and a dis- 
tiller of de luxe perfumes on the way, and landed in the 
impressive outer office of the Garden Ex. 

“But how stupid of me to describe all this! You’ve 
been there twenty times, of course, and remember the 
apple-green art-crafty furniture and potted palms and 


134 


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things. Several depressed-looking persons were fidgeting 
about, but my engraved card — score one for Hillhouse! — 
soon brought Maltby puffing out to me with both hands 
extended. Togo didn’t quite cut him dead, but almost, 
and he insulted an entire roomful of stenographers on his 
way to the great man ’s sanctum. My first sanctum , Ambo ! 
I did get a little thrill from that, in spite of Maltby. 

“Stop chattering, Susan — stick to facts. Yes, Phil, 
please. Fact One: Maltby was surprisingly flustered at 
first. He was, Ambo ! He jumped to the conclusion that I 
was down for shopping or the theaters, and assumed of 
course you were with me. So you were, dear — our way! 
But I thought Maltby asked rather gingerly, after you. 
Why? 

1 * Fact Two : I did my best to explain things, but Maltby 
doesn’t believe yet I’m serious — seemingly he can’t believe 
it, because he doesn’t want to. That’s always true of 
Maltby. He still thinks this must be a sudden spasm — not 
of virtue; thinks I’ve run away for an unholy lark. It 
suks him to think so. If I’m out on the loose he hopes 
to manage the whole Mardi gras , and he needn ’t hear what 
I say about needing work too distinctly. That merely an- 
noyed him. But I did finally make him promise — while he 
wriggled — to read my three articles and give me a decision 
on them to-morrow. I had to promise to lunch with him 
then to make even that much headway. — Oof! 

Meanwhile, I fared slightly better to-day. I took your 
letter to Mr. Sampson. The sign, Garnett & Co., almost 
frightened me off, though, Ambo; and you know I’m not 
easily frightened. But I’ve read so many of their books 
— wonderful books! I knew great men had gone before 
me into those dingy offices and left their precious manu- 
scripts to strengthen and delight the world. Who was I 
to follow those footsteps? Luckily an undaunted messen- 
ger boy whistled on in ahead of me — so I followed his in- 
stead! By the time I had won past all the guardians of 
the sanctum sanctorum, my sentimental fit was over. Birch 
Street was herself again. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


135 


“And Mr. Sampson proved all yon promised— rather 
more! The dearest odd old man, full of blunt kindness 
and sudden whimsy. I think he liked me. I know I liked 
him. But he didn’t like me as I did him — at first sight. 
Togo’s fault, of course. Why didn’t you tell me Mr. 
Sampson has a democratic prejudice against aristocratic 
dogs? I must learn to leave poor Togo at home — if there 
ever is such a place! — when I’m looking for work; I may 
even have to give up your precious soul-and-body- warming 
furs. Between them, they belie every humble petition I 
utter. Sister and I may have to eat Togo yet. 

“Mr. Sampson only began to relent when I told him a 
little about Birch Street. I didn’t tell him much — just 
enough to counteract the furs and Togo. And he forgave 
me everything when I told him of Sister and confessed 
what we were hoping to do — found a home together and 
earn our own right to make it a comfy one to live in. He 
questioned me pretty sharply, too, but not from snifty- 
snoops like Mrs. Arthur. 

“By the way, dear, she was on the train coming down, 
as luck would have it, in the chair just across from mine. 
Her questions were masterpieces, but nothing to my replies. 
I was just wretched enough to scratch without mercy; it 
relieved my feelings. But you’d better avoid her for a 
week or two — if you can ! I didn ’t mind any of Mr. Samp- 
son ’s questions, though I eluded some of them, being young 
in years but old in guile. I’m to take him my poems to- 
morrow afternoon, and some bits of prose things — the ones 
you liked. They’re not much more than fragments, I’m 
afraid. He says he wants to get the hang of me before 
loading me down with bad advice. I do like him, and — the 
serpent having trailed its length all over this endless letter 
— I truly think his offhand friendship may prove far more 

helpful to me than Maltby’s ! You can fill in the 

blank, Ambo. My shamelessness has limits, even now, in 
darkest New York. 

4 ‘ Good night, dear. Please don ’t think you are ever far 
from my me-est thoughts. Now for that typewriter ! ’ ’ 


136 


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m 

Susan to Jimmy 

4 4 That’s a breath-taking decision you’ve made, but like 
you; and I’m proud of you for having made it — and 
prouder that the idea was entirely your own. I suppose 
we’re all bound to be more or less lopsided in a world 
slightly flattened at the poles and rather wobbly on its axis 
anyway. But the less lopsided we are the better for us, 
and the better for us the better for others — and that’s 
one universal law, at least, that doesn’t make me long for 
a universal recall and referendum. 

“Oh, you’re right to stay on at Yale, but so much 
righter to have decided on a broad general course instead 
of a narrow technical one! Of course you can carry on 
your technical studies by yourself! With your brain’s 
natural twist and the practical training you’ve had, prob- 
ably carry them much farther by yourself than under di- 
rection! And the way you’ve chosen will open vistas, 
bring the sky through the jungle to you. It was brave 
of you to see that and take the first difficult step. “11 n’y 
a que le premier pas qui coute ” — but no wonder you hesi- 
tated! Because at your advanced age, Jimmy, and from 
an efficient point of view, it’s a downright silly step, waste- 
ful of time — and time you know’s money — and money you 
know’s everything. Only, I’m afraid you don’t know that 
intensely enough ever to have a marble mansion on upper 
Fifth Avenue, a marble villa at Newport, a marble bunga- 
low at Palm Beach, a marble steam yacht — but they don’t 
make those of marble, do they ! 

“It’s so possible for you to collect all these marbles, 
Jimmy — reelers, every one of them! — if you’ll only start 
now and do nothing else for the next thirty or forty years. 
You can be a poor boy who became infamous just as easy 
as pie! Simply forget the world’s so full of a number of 
things, and grab all you can of just one. But I could hug 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


137 


you for wanting to be a man, not an adding-machine! 
For caring to know why Socrates was richer than Morgan, 
and why Saint Francis and Sainte-Beuve, each in his own 
way, have helped more to make life worth living than all 
the Rothschilds of Europe! Oh, I know it’s a paradox for 
me to preach this, when here am I trying to collect a few 
small clay marbles — putting every ounce of concentration 
in me on money making, on material success! Not get- 
ting far with it, either — so far. 

“But what I’m doing, Jimmy, is just what you’ve set 
out to do — I’m trying not to be lopsided. You’ve met 
life as it is, already ; I never have. And I’d so love to moon 
along pleasantly on Ambo’s inherited money — read books 
and write verses and look at flowers and cats and stars and 
trees and children and cows and chickens and funny dogs 
and donkeys and funnier women and men! I’d so like 
not to adjust myself to an industrial civilization; not to 
worry over that sort of thing at all ; above everything, not 
to earn my daily bread. I could cry about having to make 
up my mind on such bristly beasts as economic or social 
problems ! 

“The class struggle bores me to tears — yet here it is, 
we ’re up against it ; and I won’t be lopsided ! What I want 
is pure thick cream, daintily fed to me, too, from a hand- 
beaten spoon. So I mustn’t have it unless I can get it. 
And I don’t know that I can — you see, it isn’t all con- 
science that’s driving me ; curiosity’s at work as well ! But 
it’s scrumptious to know we’re both studying the same 
thing in a different way — the one great subject, after all : 
How not to be lopsided! How to be perfectly spherical, 
like the old man in the nonsense rhyme. Not wobbly on 
one’s axis — not even slightly flattened at the poles!” 

“Hurrah for us! Trumpets! 

“But I’m gladdest of all that you and Ambo are be- 
ginning at last to be friends. You don’t either of you say 
so — it drifts through ; and I could sing about it — if I could 
sing. There isn’t anybody in the world like Ambo. 

“As for Sister and me, we’re getting on, and we’re 


138 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


not. Sister thinks I’ve done marvels; I know she has. 
Marvels of economy and taste in eozying up our room, mar- 
vels of sympathy and canny advice that doesn’t sound like 
advice at all. As one-half of a mutual-admiration syndi- 
cate I ’m a complete success ! But as a professional author 
— hum, hum. Anyway, I’m beginning to poke my inquisi- 
tive nose into a little of everything, and you can’t tell — 
something, some day, may come of this. As the Dickens 
man said — who was he ? — I hope it mayn ’t be human gore. 
Meanwhile, one thing hits the most casual eye: We’re still 
in the double-room-with-alcove boarding-house stage, and 
likely to stay there for some time to come.” 

IV 

Susan to Phil 

“Your short letter answering my long one has been 
read and reread and read again. I know it by heart. 
Everything you say’s true — and isn’t. I’ll try to explain 
that — for I can’t bear you to be doubting me. You are, 
Phil. I don’t blame you, but I do blame myself — for com- 
placency. I’ve taken too much for granted, as I always 
do with you and Ambo. You see, I know so intensely 
that you and Ambo are pure gold — incorruptible ! — that I 
couldn’t possibly question anything you might say or do 
— the fineness of the motive, I mean. If you did murder 
and were hanged for it, and even if I’d no clue as to why 
you struck — I should know all the time you must have done 
it because, for some concealed reason, under circumstances 
dark to the rest of us, your clear eyes marked it as the 
one possible right thing to do. 

“Yes, I trust you like that, Phil; you and Ambo and 
Sister and Jimmy. Think of trusting four people like that ! 
How rich I am! And you can’t know how passionately 
grateful! For it isn’t blind trusting at all. In each one 
of you I’ve touched a soul of goodness. There’s no other 
name for it. It’s as simple as fresh air. You’re good — 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


139 


you four — good from the center. But, Phil dear, a little 
secret to comfort you — just between us and the stars: So, 
mostly, am I. 

“Truly, Phil, I’m ridiculously good at the center, and 
most of the way out. There are things I simply can’t do, 
no matter how much I’d like to; and lots of oozy, opally 
things I simply can’t like at all. I’m with you so far, at 
least — peacock-proud to be! But we’re tremendously dif- 
ferent, all the same. It’s really this, I think: You’re a 
Puritan, by instinct and cultivation; and I’m not. The 
clever ones down here, you know, spend most of their 
spare time swearing by turns at Puritanism and the Vic- 
torian Era. Their favorite form of exercise is patting 
themselves on the back, and this is one of their subtler 
ways of doing it. But they just rampantly rail; they 
don’t — though they think they do — understand. They mix 
up every passe narrowness and bigotry and hypocrisy and 
sentimental cant in one foul stew, and then rush from it, 
with held noses, screaming “Puritanism! Faugh!” Well, 
it does, Phil — their stew ! So, often, for that matter — and 
to high heaven — do the clever ones ! 

“But it isn’t Puritanism, the real thing. You see, I 
know the real thing — for I know you. Ignorance, bigotry, 
hypocrisy, sentimentalism — such things have no part in 
your life. And yet you’re a Puritan, and I’m not. Some- 
thing divides us where we are most alike. What is it, 
Phil? 

“May I tell you? I almost dare believe I’ve puzzled it 
out. 

“You’re a simon-Puritan, dear, because you won’t trust 
that central goodness, your own heart; the very thing in 
you on whose virgin-goldness I would stake my life! You 
won’t trust it in yourself; and when you find it in others, 
you don’t fully trust it in them. You’ve purged your 
philosophy of Original Sin, but it still secretly poisons the 
marrow of your bones. You guard your soul’s strength 
as possible weakness — something that might vanish sud- 
denly, at a pinch. How silly of you! For it’s the you-e st 


140 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


you, the thing you can never change or escape. Instead 
of worrying over yourself or others — me ? — you could safely 
spread yourself, Phil dear, all over the landscape, lie back 
in the lap of Mother Earth and twiddle your toes and 
smile! Walt Whitman’s way! He may have overdone 
it now and then, posed about it; but I’m on his side, not 
yours. It’s heartier — human-er — more fun! Yes, Master 
Puritan — more fun! That’s a life value you’ve mostly 
missed. But it’s never too late, Phil, for a genuine cosmic 
spree. 

‘‘Now I’ve done scolding back at you for scolding at me. — 
But I loved your sermon. I hope you won’t shudder over 
mine ? ’ ’ 

v 

The above too-cryptic letter badly needs authoritative 
annotation, which I now proceed to give you — at perilous 
length. But it will lead us far. . . . 

Though it is positively not true that Phil and I, having 
covenanted on a hands-off policy, were independently hop- 
ing for the worst, so far as Susan’s ability to cope unaided 
with New York was concerned; nevertheless, the ease with 
which she made her way there, found her feet without us 
and danced ahead, proved for some reason oddly disturbing 
to us both. Here was a child, of high talents certainly, 
perhaps of genius — the like, at least, of whose mental pre- 
cocity we had never met with in any other daughter — much 
less, son — of Eve ! A woman, for we so loved her, endowed 
as are few women; yet assuredly a child, for she had but 
just counted twenty years on earth. And being men of 
careful maturity, once Susan had left us, our lonely anx- 
ieties fastened upon this crying fact of her youth ; it was 
her youth, her inexperience, that made her venture sud- 
denly pathetic and dreadful to us, made us yearn to watch 
over her, warn her of pitfalls, guide her steps. 

True, she was not alone. Miss Goucher was admirable 
in her way; though a middle-aged spinster, after all, un- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


141 


used to the sharp temptations and fierce competitions of 
metropolitan life. It was not a house-mother Susan would 
need; the wolves lurked beyond the door — shrewd, soft- 
treading wolves, cunningly disguised. How could a child, 
a charming and too daring child — however gifted — be ex- 
pected to deal with these creatures? The thought of these 
subtle, these patient ones, tracking her — tracking her — 
chilled us to hours-long wakefulness in the night! Then 
with the morning a letter would come, filled with strange 
men’s names. 

We compared notes, consulted together — shaking un- 
happy heads. We wrote tactful letters to Hey wood Samp- 
son, begging him, but always indirectly, to keep an eye. 
We ran down singly for nights in town, rescued — the verb 
was ours — Susan and Miss Goucher from their West 10th 
Street boarding-house, interfered with their work or other 
plans, haled them — the verb, I fear, was theirs — to dinner, 
to the opera or theater, or perhaps to call on someone of 
ribbed respectability who might prove an observant friend. 
God knows, in spite of all resolutions, we did our poor best 
to mind Susan ’s business for her, to brood over her destiny 
from afar! 

And God knows our efforts were superfluous ! The traps, 
stratagems, springes in her path, merely suspected by us 
and hence the more darkly dreaded, were clearly seen by 
Susan and laughed at for the ancient, pitiful frauds they 
were. The dull craft, the stale devices of avarice or lust 
were no novelties to her; she greeted them, en passant, 
with the old Birch Street terrier-look ; just a half-mocking 
nod of recognition — an amused, half-wistful salute to her 
gamin past. It was her gamin past we had forgotten, Phil 
and I, when we agonized over Susan ’s inexperienced youth. 
Inexperienced? Bob Blake’s kid! If there were things 
New York could yet teach Bob Blake’s kid — and there 
were many — they were not those that had made her see in 
it “Birch Street — on a slightly exaggerated scale”! 

But, as the Greeks discovered many generations ago, 
it is impossible to be high-minded or clear-sighted enough 


142 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


to outwit a secret unreason in the total scheme of things. 
Else the virtuous, in the Greek sense, would be always the 
fortunate ; and perhaps then would grow too self -regarding. 
Does the last and austerest beauty of the ideal not flower 
from this, that it can promise us nothing but itself? You 
can choose a clear road, yet you shall never walk there in 
safety: Chance — that secret unreason — lurks in the hedge- 
rows, myriad-formed, to plot against you. “Helas!” as 
the French heroine might say. ‘ 4 Diddle-diddle-dumpling ! ’ * 
as might say Susan. . . . Meaning : That strain, Ambo, was 
of a higher mood, doubtless ; but do return to your muttons. 

Susan had reached New York late in November, 1913, 
and the letter to Phil dates from the following January. 
Barely two months had passed since her first calls upon 
Maltby and Heywood Sampson, but every day of that 
period had been made up of crowded hours. Of the three 
manufactured-in-advance articles for the Garden Ex., 
Maltby had accepted one, paying thirty dollars for it, half- 
rate — Susan’s first professional earnings; but the manner 
of his acceptance had convinced Susan it was a mere stroke 
of personal diplomacy on his part. He did not wish to 
encourage her as a business associate, for Maltby kept his 
business activities rigidly separate from what he held to 
be his life; neither did he wish to offend her. What he 
wholly desired was to draw her into the immediate circles 
he frequented as a social being, where he could act as her 
patron on a scale at once more brilliant and more im- 
pressive. 

So far as the Garden Ex. was concerned, his attitude 
from the first had been one of sympathetic discouragement. 
Susan hit off his manner perfectly in an earlier letter: 

“ ‘My dear Susan ! You can write very delicate, distinc- 
tive verse, no doubt, and all that — and of course there’s a 
fairly active market for verse nowadays, and I can put you 
in touch with some little magazines, a cote, that print such 
things, and even occasionally pay for them. They’re your 
field, I’m convinced. But, frankly, I can’t see you quite 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


143 


as one of onr contributors — and I couldn’t pay you a 
higher compliment ! 

“ ‘You don’t suppose, do you, I sit here like an old- 
fashioned editor, reading voluntary contributions? No, 
my dear girl ; I have a small, well-broken staff of writers, 
and I tell them what to write. If I find myself, for ex- 
ample, with a lot of parade interiors taken in expensive 
homes, I select four or five, turn ’em over to Abramovitz, 
and tell him to do us something on “The More Dignified 
Dining-Room” or “The Period Salon, a Study in Rest- 
fulness. ’ ’ Abramovitz knows exactly what to say, and how 
to point the snobbish-but-not-too-snobbish captions and 
feature the best names. I’ve no need to experiment, you 
see. I count on Abramovitz. Just so with other matters. 
Here’s an article, now, on “The Flaunting Paeony.” 
Skeat did that, of course. It’s signed “Winifred Snow” 
— all his flower-and-sundial stuff is — and it couldn ’t be bet- 
ter ! I don ’t even have to read it. 

“ ‘Well, there you are! I’m simply a purveyor of stan- 
dardized goods in standardized packages. Dull work, but 
it pays. ’ 

“ ‘Exactly!’ I struck in. ‘It pays! That’s why I’m 
interested. Sister and Togo and I need the money!’ ” 

As for the brilliant, intertwined circles frequented by 
Maltby as a social being, within which, he hoped to per- 
suade Susan, lay true freedom, while habit slyly bound her 
with invisible chains — well, they are a little difficult to de- 
scribe. Taken generally, we may think of them as the 
Artistic Smart Set. Maltby ’s acquaintance was wide, pene- 
trating in many directions ; but he felt most at home among 
those iridescent ones of earth whose money is as easy as 
their morals, and whose ruling passion for amusement is at 
least directed by aesthetic sensibilities and vivacious brains. 

Within Maltby ’s intersecting circles were to be found, 
then, many a piquant contrast, many an anomalous com- 
bination. There the young, emancipated society matron, of 
fattest purse and slenderest figure, expressed her sophisti- 
cated paganism through interpretative dancing; and there 


144 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


the fashionable painter of portraits, solidly arrived, ex- 
hibited her slender figure on a daring canvas — made pos- 
sible by the fatness of her purse — at one of his peculiarly 
intimate studio teas. There the reigning ingenue , whose 
graceful diablerie in imagined situations on the stage was 
equalled only by her roguish effrontery in more real, if 
hardly less public situations off, played up to the affluent 
amateur — patron of all arts that require an unblushing co- 
operation from pretty young women. There, in short, all 
were welcome who liked the game and were not hampered 
in playing it by dull inhibitions, material or immaterial. 
It was Bohemia de luxe — Bohemia in the same sense that 
Marie Antoinette’s dairy-farm was Arcady. 

That Susan — given her doting guardian, her furs, her 
Chow, her shadowy-gleaming, imaginative charm, her sharp 
audacities of speech — would bring a new and seductive 
personality to this perpetual carnival was Maltby ’s dream ; 
she was predestined — he had long suspected the tug of 
that fate upon her — to shine there by his side. He best 
could offer the cup, and her gratitude for its heady drafts 
of life would be merely his due. It was an exciting 
prospect; it promised much; and it only remained to in- 
toxicate Susan with the wine of an unguessed freedom. 
This, Maltby fondly assured himself, would prove no diffi- 
cult task. Life was life, youth was youth, joy was joy; 
their natural affinities were all on his side and would play 
into his practiced hands. 

Doubtless Phil and I must have agreed with him — from 
how differently anxious a spirit ! — but all three of us would 
then have proved quite wrong. To intoxicate Susan, 
Maltby did find a difficult, in the end an impossible, task. 
He took her — not unwilling to enter and appraise any cir- 
cle from high heaven to nether hell — to all the right, magi- 
cal places, exposed her to all the heady influences of his 
world ; and she found them enormously stimulating — to her 
sense of the ironic. Maltby ’s sensuous, quick-witted friends 
simply would not come true for Susan when she first moved 
among them ; they were not serious about anything but re- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


145 


fined sensation and she could not take their refined sensa- 
tions seriously; but for a time they amused her, and she 
relished them much as Charles Lamb relished the belles 
and rakes of Restoration Drama: “They are a world of 
themselves almost as much as fairyland.” 

To their intimate dinners, their intimate musical eve- 
nings, their intimate studio revels — she came on occasion 
with Maltby as to a play : ‘ ‘ altogether a speculative scene of 
things.” She could, in those early weeks, have borrowed 
Lamb’s words for her own comedic detachment: “We are 
amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by 
our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their 
proceedings — for they have none among them. No peace 
of families is violated — for no family ties exist among 
them. . . . No deep affections are disquieted, no holy-wed- 
lock bands are snapped asunder — for affection’s depth and 
wedded faith are not the growth of that soil. There is 
neither right nor wrong. ... Of what consequence is it to 
Virtue or how is she at all concerned ? . . . The whole thing 
is a passing pageant.” 

It is probable that Maltby at first mistook her interest 
in the spectacle for the preliminary stirrings of its spell 
within her ; but he must soon have been aware — for he had 
intelligence — that Susan was not precisely flinging herself 
among his maskers with the thrilled abandon that would 
betoken surrender. She was not afraid of these clever, 
beauty-loving maskers, some of whom bore celebrated 
names; it was not timidity that restrained her; she, too, 
loved beauty and lilting wit and could feel joyously at 
ease among them — for an hour or two — once in a while. 
But to remain permanently within those twining circles, 
held to a limited dream, when she was conscious of wilder, 

freer, more adventurous spaces without ! Why should 

she narrow her sympathies like that? It never occurred 
to her as a temptation to do so. She had drunk of a 
headier cup, and had known a vaster intoxication. From 
the magic circle of her cedar trees, in that lonely aban- 
doned field back of Mount Carmel, the imaginations of her 


146 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


heart had long since streamed outward beyond all such 
passing pageants, questing after a dream that does not 
pass. 

No gilded nutshell could bound her now; she could be- 
come the slave of no intersected ring. . . . Lesser incan- 
tations were powerless. 

So much, then, for my own broad annotation of Susan’s 
letter to Phil ! But I leave you with generalizations, when 
your interest is in concrete fact. Patience. In my too 
fumbling way I am ready for you there, as well. 

VI 

Susan to Jimmy 

“I suppose you’d really like to know what I’ve lately 
been up to; but I hardly know myself. It’s absurd, of 
course, but I almost think I’m having a weeny little fit of 
the blues to-night — not dark-blue devils exactly — say, light- 
blue gnomes! I hate being pushed about, and things have 
pushed me about, rather. It’s that, I think. There’s been 
too much — of everything — somehow 

“You see, my social life just now is divided into three 
parts, like all Gaul, and as my business opportunities — 
Midas forgive them! — have all come out of my social con- 
tacts, I’ll have to begin with them. Maltby’s the golden 
key to the first part ; Mr. Heywood Sampson, the great old- 
school publisher and editor-author, is the iron key to the 
second ; and chance — our settling down here on the fringes 
of Greenwich Village — is the skeleton key to the third. 

“I seem to be getting all Gaul mixed up with Blue- 
beard’s closets and things, but I’ll try to straighten my 
kinky metaphors out for you, Jimmy, if it takes me all 
night. But I assume you’re more or less up to date on 
me, since I find you all most brazenly hand me round, and 
since I wrote Phil — and got severely scolded in return ; 
deserved it, too — all about Maltby’s patiently snubbing me 
as a starving author and impatiently rushing me as a pos- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


147 


sible member for his Emancipated Order of ^Esthetic May- 
Flies — I call it his, for he certainly thinks of it that way. 
Now — Maltby and I have not precisely quarreled, but the 
north wind doth blow and we’ve already had snow enough 
to cool his enthusiasm. The whole thing’s unpleasant; but 
I’ve learned something. Result — my occasional flutterings 
among the ^Esthetic May-Flies grow beautifully less. 
They’d cease altogether if I hadn’t made friends — to call 
them that — with a May-Fly or two. 

“One of them’s the novelist, Clifton Young, a May-Fly 
at heart — but there’s a strain of Honeybee in his blood 
somewhere. It’s an unhappy combination — all the talents 
and few of the virtues; but I like him in spite of himself. 
For one thing, he doesn’t pose; and he can write! He’s a 
lost soul, though — thinks life is a tragic farce. Almost all 
the May-Flies try to think that ; it ’s a sort of guaranty of 
the last sophistication; but it’s genuine with Clifton, he 
must have been born thinking it. He doesn’t ask for 
sympathy, either; if he did, I couldn’t pity him — and get 
jeered at wittily for my pains! 

4 ‘ Then there ’s Mona Leslie, who might have been a true 
Honeybee if everybody belonging to her hadn’t died too 
soon, leaving her hopeless numbers of millions. Mona, for 
some reason, has taken a passing fancy to me ; all her fan- 
cies pass. She sings like an angel, and might have made 
a career — if it had seemed worth while. It never has. 
Nothing has, but vivid sensation — from ascetic religion to 
sloppy love; and, at thirty, she’s exhausted the whole show. 
So she spends her time now in a mad duel with boredom. 
Poor woman ! Luckily the fairies gave her a selfishly kind 
heart, and there’s a piece of it left, I think. It may even 
win the duel for her in the end. More and more she’s the 
reckless patron of all the arts, almost smothering ennui 
under her benefactions. She’d smother poor me, too, if I’d 
let her ; but I can ’t ; I’m either not brazen enough or not 
Christian enough to let her patronize me for her own 
amusement. And that ’s her one new sensation for the last 
three years! 


148 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“ Still, I’ve one thing to thank her for, and I wish I 
could feel grateful. She introduced me, at one of her 
Arabian-Nightish soirees musicales , to Hadow Bury, pro- 
prietor of Whim , the smarty-party weekly review. In two 
years it’s made a sky-rocketing success, by printing the 
harum-scarumest possible comment on all the social and 
aesthetic fads and freaks of the day — just the iris froth 
of the wave, that and that only. Hadow ’s a big, black, 
bleak man-mountain. You’d take him for an undertaker 
by special appointment to coal-beef-and-iron kings. You’d 
never suspect him of having capitalized the Frivolous. 
But he’s found it means bagfuls of reelers for him, so he 
takes it seriously. He’s after the goods. He gets and de- 
livers the goods, no matter what they cost. He’s ready to 
pay any price now for a new brand of cerebral champagne. 

4 ‘Well, I didn’t know what he was when Mona casually 
dropped me beside him, but he loomed so big and black 
and bleak he frightened me — till my thoughts chattered! 
I rattled on — like this, Jimmy — only not because I wanted 
to, but because having madly started I didn’t know how 
to stop. I made a fool of myself — utter; with the result 
that he detected a slightly different flavor in my folly, a 
possibly novel bouquet — let’s call it the ‘Birch Street bou- 
quet .’ At any rate, he finally silenced me to ask whether 
I could write as I talked, and I said I hoped not; and he 
looked bleaker and blacker than ever and said that was the 
worst of it, so few amusing young women could ! It seemed 
to be one of the more annoying laws of Nature. 

“The upshot was, I found out all about him and his 
ambitions for Whim; and the fantastic upshot of that was, 
I’m now doing a nonsense column a week for him — have 
been for the past five — and getting fifty dollars a week for 
my nonsense, too! I sign the thing “Dax” — a signature 
invented by shutting both eyes and punching at my type- 
writer three times, just to see what would happen. “Dax” 
happened, and I’m to be allowed to burble on as him — I 
think Dax is a him — for ten weeks ; then, if my stuff goes, 
catches on, gets over — I’m to have a year’s contract. And 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


149 


farewell to double-room-and-alcove for aye! Else, fare- 
well Whim! So it must get over — I’m determined ! I stick 
at nothing. I even test my burble on poor Sister every 
week before sending it in. If she smiles sadly, twice, I 
seal up the envelope and breathe again. 

‘ ‘That’s my bird in the hand, Jimmy — a sort of crazily 
screaming jay — but I mustn’t let it escape. 

“There’s another bird, though. A real bluebird, still 
in the bush — and oh, so shy! And he lures me into the 
second and beautifulest part of all Gaul 

“ It ’s no use, I ’m dished ! Sister says no one ever wrote 
or read such a monstrous letter, and commands me to stop 
now and go to bed. There’s a look in her eye — she means 
it. Good-night and good luck — I ’ll tell you about my other 
two parts of Gaul as soon as I can, unless you wire me — 
collect — ‘ Cut it out ! ’ Or unless you run down — you never 
have — and learn of them that way. Why not — soon?” 

vn 

Jimmy Kane took the hint, or obeyed the open request, 
in Susan’s letter and went down to New York for the week- 
end ; and on the following Monday Miss Goucher wrote her 
first considerable letter to me. It was a long letter, for her, 
written — recopied, I fancy — in precise script, though it 
would have been a mere note for Susan. 

My dear Mr. Hunt: I promised to let you know from 
time to time the exact truth about our experiment. It is 
already a success financially. Susan is now earning from 
sixty to seventy dollars a week, with every prospect of 
earning substantially more in the near future. Her satiri- 
cal paragraphs and verses in “Whim” are quoted and 
copied everywhere. They do not seem to me quite the 
Susan I love, but then, I am not a clever person ; and it is 
undeniable that “Who is Dax?” is being asked now on 
every hand. If this interest continues, I am assured it 


150 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


can only mean fame and fortune. I am very proud of 

Susan, as you must be. 

But, Mr. Hunt, there is another side to my picture. In 
alluding to it I feel a sense of guilt toward Susan ; I know 
she would not wish me to do so. Yet I feel that I must. If 
I may say so to you, Susan has quickened in me many 
. starved affections, and they all center in her. In this, may 
I not feel without offense that we are of one mind ? 

If I had Susan’s pen I could tell you more clearly why 1 
am troubled. I lack her gift, which is also yours, of ex- 
pressing what I feel is going on secretly in another’s mind. 
Mr. Phar and a Mr. Young, a writer, have been giving 
Susan some cause for annoyance lately; but that is not it. 
Mr. Hunt, she is deeply unhappy. She would deny it, 
even to you or me ; but it is true. 

My mind is too commonplace for this task. If my at- 
tempt to explain sounds crude, please forgive it and supply 
what is beyond me. 

I can only say now that when I once told you Susan 
could stand alone, I was mistaken. In a sense she can. If 
her health does not give way, life will never beat her down. 
But — there are the needs of women, older than art. They 
tear at us, Mr. Hunt ; at least while we are young. I could 
not say this to you, but I must manage somehow to write 
it. I do not refer to passion, taken by itself. I am old 
enough to be shocked, Mr. Hunt, to find that many brilliant 
women to-day have advanced beyond certain boundaries so 
long established. You will understand. 

A woman’s need is greater than passion, greater even 
than motherhood. It is so hard for me to express it. But 
she can only find rest when these things are not lived sepa- 
rately; when, with many other elements, they build up a 
living whole — what we call a home. How badly I put it ; 
for I feel so much more than the conventional sentiments. 
Will you understand me at all if I say that Susan is home- 
sick — for a home she has never known and may never be 
privileged to know? With all her insight I think she 
doesn ’t realize this yet ; but I once suffered acutely in this 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


151 


way, and it perhaps gives me the right to speak. Of course 
I may be quite wrong. I am more often wrong than right. 

I venture to inclose a copy of some lines, rescued last 
week from our scrap-basket. I’m not a critic, but am I 
wrong in thinking it would have been a pity to burn them ? 
As they are not in free verse, which I do not appreciate as 
I should, they affected me very much ; and I feel they will 
tell you, far more than my letter, why I am a little worried 
about Susan. 

Young Mr. Kane informed me, when he was here on 
Sunday, that you and Professor Parmer are well. He 
seems a nice boy, though still a little crude perhaps ; noth- 
ing offensive. I am confined to the room to-day by a 
slight cold of no consequence; I hope I may not pass it 
on to Susan. Kindly give my love to Sonia, if you should 
see her, and to little Ivan. I trust the new housekeeper 
I obtained for you is reasonably efficient, and that Tumps 
is not proving too great a burden. I am, 

Respectfully yours, 

Malvina Goucher. 

The inclosed “copy of some lines” affected me quite as 
much as they had Miss Goucher, and it was inconceivable 
to me that Susan, having written them, could have tossed 
them away. As a matter of fact she had not. Like Calais 
in the queen ’s heart, they were engraven in her own. They 
were too deeply hers ; she had meant merely to hide tl em 
from the world; and it is even now with a curious reluc- 
tance that I give them to you here. The lines bore no 
title, but I have ventured, with Susan’s consent, to call 
them 

MENDICANTS 

We who are poets beg the gods 
Shamelessly for immortal bliss , 

While the derisive years with rods 
Flay us; nor silvery Artemis 
Hearkens, nor Cypris bends , nor she , 


152 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


The grave Athena with gray eyes . 

Were they not heartless would they he 
Deaf to the hunger of our cries? 

We are the starving ones of clay, 

Famished for deathless love, no less. 

Oh, hut the gods are far and fey , 

Shut in their azure palaces! 

Oh, hut the gods are far and fey, 

Blind to the rags of our distress! 

We pine on crumhs they flick away; 

Brief beauty, and much weariness. 

And the night I read these lines a telegram came to me 
from New York, signed “Lucette Arthur,” announcing 
that Gertrude was suddenly dead. . . . 


THE FIFTH CHAPTER 


i 

I AM an essayist, if anything, trying to tell Susan ’s story, 
and telling it badly, I fear, for lack of narrative skill. 
So it is with no desire to prolong cheaply a possible £oint 
of suspense that I must double back now before I can go 
forward. My personal interest centers so entirely in Susan 
herself, in the special qualities of her mind and heart, that 
I have failed to bring in certain stiff facts — essential, alas, 
to all further progress. A practiced novelist, handling this 
purely biographic material — such a man as Clifton Young 
— would quietly have 4 ‘planted” these facts in their due 
order, thus escaping my present embarrassment. But in- 
deed I am approaching a cruel crisis in Susan’s life and 
in the lives of those dearest to her; a period of sheer cir- 
cumstantial fatality; one of those incursions of mad coin- 
cidence, of crass melodrama, which — with a brutal, ironic, 
improbability, as if stage-managed by an anarchistic fiend 
of the pit — bursts through some fine-spun, geometrical web 
of days, leaving chaos behind; and I am ill-equipped to 
deal with this chance destruction, this haphazard wan- 
tonness. 

Even could I merely have observed it from the outside, 
with assthetic detachment, it would baffle me now ; I should 
find it too crude for art, too arbitrary. It is not in my line. 
But God knows the victim of what seems an insane break 
in Nature is in no mood for art; he can do little more 
than cry out or foolishly rail ! 

Jimmy returned from his excursion to New York on the 
Sunday evening preceding Miss Goucher ’s letter. She must 

153 


154 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


have been at work on it the next evening when Phil brought 
him to dine with me. It was our deliberate purpose to 
draw him out, track his shy impressions of Susan and of 
her new life in her new world. But it was hard going at 
first; for ten minutes or so we bagged little but the ordi- 
nary Jimmyesque cliches. He had had a great time, etc., 
etc. . . . 

Matters improved with the roast. It then appeared that 
he had lightly explored with Susan the two-thirds of Gaul 
omitted from her letter. He had called with her on Hey- 
wood Sampson, and fathomed Susan’s allusion to the shy 
bluebird. Mr. Sampson, he assured us, was a fine old boy 
— strong for Susan too! He’d read a lot of her poems 
and things and was going to bring out the poems for her 
right away. But the bluebird in the bush had to do with 
a pet scheme of his for a weekly critical review of a differ- 
ent stamp from Hadow Bury’s Whim. Solider, Jimmy im- 
agined; safe and sane — the real thing! If Mr. Sampson 
should decide to launch it — he was still hesitating over the 
business outlook — Susan was to find a place on his staff. 

Mr. Sampson, Jimmy opined, had the right idea about 
things in general. He didn’t like Susan’s quick stuff in 
Whim ; thought it would cheapen her if she kept at it too 
long. And Mr. Sampson didn’t approve of Susan’s re- 
maining third of Gaul, either — her Greenwich Village 
friends. Not much wonder, Jimmy added; Susan had 
trotted him round to three or four studios and places, and 
they were a funny job lot. Too many foreigners among 
them for him ; they talked too much ; and they pawed. But 
some nice young people, too. Most of them were young — 
and not stuck up. Friendly. Sort of alive — interested in 
everything — except, maybe, being respectable. Their jokes, 
come to think of it, were all about being respectable — kid- 
ding everyday people who weren’t up to the latest ideas. 
There was a lot of jabber one place about the “CEdipus 
Complex,” for example, but he didn’t connect at all. He 
had his own idea — surely, not of the latest — that a lot 
of the villagers might feel differently when they began to 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


155 


make good and started their bank accounts. But Susan 
was on to them, anyway, far more than they were on to 
her! She liked them, though — in spite of Mr. Sampson; 
didn’t fall for their craziest ways or notions of course, 
but was keen about their happy-go-lucky side — their pep! 
Besides, they weren’t all alike, naturally. Take the pick 
of them, the ones that did things instead of posing round 
and dressing the part, and Jimmy could see they might be 
there. At least, they were on their way — like Susan. 

This was all very well, so far as it went; but we had 
felt, Phil and I, a dumb undercurrent struggling to press 
upward into speech, and after dinner before the fire, we 
did our best to help Jimmy free its course. Gradually it 
became apparent; it rather trickled than gushed forth. 
Jimmy was bothered, more than bothered; there was some- 
thing, perhaps there were several things, on his mind. We 
did not press him, using subtler methods, biding our time ; 
and little by little Jimmy oozed toward the full revelation 
of an uneasy spirit. 

“Did you see Mr. Phar?” Phil asked. 

“No,” said Jimmy, his forehead knotting darkly; “I 
guess it ’s a good thing I didn ’t too ! ” 

“Why?” 

“Well, that letter I had from Susan — the one I showed 
you, Mr. Hunt — mentioned some unpleasantness with Mr. 
Phar; and all Saturday afternoon while she was trotting 
me round, I could see she’d been worrying to herself a 
good deal.” 

“Worrying?” 

“Yes. Whenever she thought I wasn’t paying attention 
her face would go — sort of dead tired and sad — all used 
up. I can’t describe it. And one or two remarks she 
dropped didn’t sound as happy as she meant them to. 
Then, Sunday morning, she had to get some work done, so 
I took Miss Goucher to church. I’m supposed to be a 
Catholic, you know; but I guess I’m not much of any- 
thing. I’d just as soon go to one kind of church as an- 
other, if the music ’s good. Anyway, it was a nice morning 


156 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and Miss Goucher thought I’d like to see the Fifth Ave- 
nue parade ; so we walked up to some silk-stocking church 
above Thirty-fourth Street, where they have a dandy choir ; 
and back again afterwards. I stayed at the Brevoort, down 
near them, you know; and Miss Goucher certainly is a 
peach. We got along fine. And I found out from her 
how Mr. Phar’s been acting. He’s a bad actor, all right. 
I’m just as glad I didn’t run into him. I might have done 
something foolish.” 

“What, for instance?” I suggested. 

“Well,” muttered Jimmy, “there’s some things I can’t 
stand. I might have punched his head.” 

Phil whistled softly. 

“He’s not what I call a white man,” explained Jimmy, 
dogged and slow, as if to justify his vision of assault. 
“He’s a painted pup.” 

“Come, Jimmy!” Phil commanded. “Out with it! 
Hunt and I know he’s been annoying Susan, but that’s all 
we know. I supposed he might have been pressing his at- 
tentions too publicly. If it’s more than that ” 

There was an unusual sternness in Phil’s eye. Jimmy 
appealed from it to mine, but in vain. 

“Look here, Mr. Hunt,” he blurted, “Susan’s all right, 
of course — and so ’s Miss Goucher ! They ’ve got their eyes 
open. And maybe it’s not up to me to say anything. But 
if I was in your place, I’d feel like giving two or three 
people down there a piece of my mind! Susan wouldn’t 
thank me for saying so, I guess; she’s modern — she likes 
to be let alone. Why, she laughed at me more than once 
for getting sort of hot ! And I know I ’ve a bunch to learn 
yet. But all the same,” he pounded on, “I do know this: 
It was a dirty trick of Mr. Phar’s not to stand up for 
Susan!” 

“Not stand up for her! What do you mean?” Phil 
almost barked. 

“Jimmy means, Phil,” I explained, “that some rather 
vague rumors began not along ago to spread through 
Maltby’s crowd in regard to Susan — as to why she found 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


157 


it advisable to leave New Haven. Many of his friends 
know me, of course — or know Gertrude; know all about 
us, at any rate. It’s not very remarkable, then, that 
Susan’s appearance in New York— and so far as Maltby’s 
May-Flies know, in some sense under his wing — has set 
tongues wagging. I was afraid of it; but I know Maltby’s 
set well enough to know that to-day’s rumor, unless it’s 
pretty sharply spiced, is soon forgotten. To-morrow’s is 
so much fresher, you see. The best thing for innocent 
victims to do is to keep very still. And then, I confess, it 
seemed to me unlikely that Maltby would permit anything 
of the sort to go too far.” 

I saw that Jimmy was following my exposition with the 
most painful surprise. Phil grunted disgustedly as I 
ended. 

‘ ‘ I don ’t pretend to much knowledge of that world, ’ ’ he 
said deliberately, 4 ‘but common sense tells me Maltby 
Phar might think it to his advantage to fan the flame in- 
stead of stamping it out. I may be unfair to him, but I ’m 
even capable of supposing he touched it off in the first 
place.” 

“No, Phil,” I objected, “he wouldn’t have done that. 
But you seem to be right about his failing to stamp out 
the sparks. That’s what you meant by his not standing 
up for Susan, isn’t it, Jimmy?” 

The boy’s face was a study in unhappy perplexity. “I 
guess I’m like Professor Farmer!” he exclaimed. “I’m 
not on to people who act like that. But, Mr. Hunt, you’re 
dead wrong — excuse me, sir!” 

“Go on, Jimmy.” 

“Well, I mean — you spoke of vague rumors, didn’t you? 
They’re not vague. I guess Susan hasn’t wanted to upset 
you. Miss Goueher told me all about it, and she wouldn’t 
have done it, would she, if she hadn’t hoped I’d bring it 
straight back to you? I guess she promised Susan not to 
tell you, so she told me. That’s the only way I can figure 
it,” concluded Jimmy. 


158 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

Phil was grim now. 1 ‘ Give us your facts, Jimmy — all of 
them. ’ ' 

“ Yes, sir. There's a Mr. Young ; he writes things. He's 
clever. They're all clever down there. Well, Mr. Young's 
dead gone on Susan ; but then, he 's the kind that 's always 
dead gone on somebody. It’s women with him, you see, 
sir. Susan understands. It don’t seem right she should, 
somehow; but — well, Susan’s always been different from 
most girls. At least, I don't know many girls " 

4 ‘Never mind that,” prompted Phil. 

“No, sir. Talking about things like this always rat- 
tles me. I can’t help it. They kind of stick in my throat. 
Well, Mr. Young don't want to marry anybody, but he's 
been making love to Susan — trying to. He had the wrong 
idea about her, you see ; and Susan saw that, too — saw he 
thought she was playing him for a poor fish. So — her way 
— out she comes with it to him, flat. And he gets sore 
and comes back at her with what he'd heard.” Jimmy's 
handkerchief was pulled out at this point; he mopped his 
brow. “It don't feel right even to speak of lies like this 
about — any decent girl, ’ ' he mumbled. 

“No,” Phil agreed, “it doesn’t. But there's nothing 
for it now. Get it said and done with!” 

“Yes, sir. Mr. Young told Susan he wasn't a fool; he 
knew she'd been — what she shouldn’t be — up here.” 

“Hunt’s mistress, you mean?” snapped Phil. 

“Yes, sir,” whispered Jimmy, his face purple with agon- 
ized shame. 

“And then?” 

“Susan’s a wonder,” continued Jimmy, taking heart 
now his Rubicon lay behind him. “Most girls would have 
thrown a fit. But Susan seems to feel there's a lot to Mr. 
Young, in spite of all that rotten side of him. She saw 
right away he believed that about her, and so he couldn’t 
be blamed much for getting sore. Anyway, he must have 
a white streak in him, for Susan talked to him — the way 
she can — and he soon realized he was in all wrong. But 
the reason he was in wrong — that’s what finished things 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 159 

between Susan and Mr. Phar! I guess you won’t blame 
me for wanting to punch his head. ’ ’ 

“No,” I threw in; “I shouldn’t blame you for wanting 
to punch mine!” 

“Give us the reason, Jimmy,” insisted Phil, his grave, 
Indianlike face stiffened to a mask. 

“Mr. Young didn’t get that lie from Mr. Phar,” ad- 
mitted Jimmy, “but he did take it straight to him, when 
he first heard it, thinking he ought to know.” 

‘ ‘ Good God ! ” I cried. ‘ ‘ Do you mean to tell me Maltby 
confirmed it?” 

“Well,” Jimmy hesitated, “it seems he didn’t come right 
out and say, ‘Yes, that’s so !’ But he didn’t deny it either. 
Sort of shrugged his shoulders, I guess, and did things 
with his eyebrows. Whatever he did or didn’t, Mr. Young 
got it fastened in his head then and there that Susan ’ ’ 

But this time Jimmy simply couldn’t go on; the words 
stuck in his throat and stayed there. 

Phil’s eyes met mine and held them, long. 

“Hunt,” he said quietly at last, “it’s a fortunate thing 
for Susan — for all of us — that I have long years of self- 
discipline behind me. Otherwise, I should go to New York 
to-morrow, find Maltby Phar, and shoot him.” 

Jimmy’s blue eyes flashed toward Phil a startled but 
admiring glance. 

“What do you propose to do, Hunt?” demanded Phil. 

“Think,” I replied; “think hard — think things through. 
Wednesday morning I shall leave for New York.” 

n 

My prophecy was correct. Wednesday, at 12.03 A. m., I 
left for New York, in response to the shocking telegram 
from Lucette. I arrived at Gertrude’s address, an august 
apartment house on upper Park Avenue, a little before 
half -past two v dismissed my taxi at the door, noting as I 
did so a second taxi standing at the curb just ahead of 
my own, and was admitted to the dignified public entrance- 


160 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


hall with surprising promptness, considering the hour, by 
the mature buttons on duty. Buttons was a man nearing 
sixty, at a guess, of markedly Irish traits, and he was un- 
expectedly wide-awake. When I gave him my name, and 
briefly stated the reason for my untimely arrival, his deep- 
set eyes glittered with excited curiosity, while he drew 
down deep parallels about his mouth in a grimacing at- 
tempt at deepest sympathy and profoundest respect. I 
questioned him. Several persons had gone up to Mrs. 
Hunt’s apartment, he solemnly informed me, during the 
past two hours. He believed the police were in charge. 

“Police?” I exclaimed, incredulous. 

He believed so. He would say no more. 

“Take me up at once!” I snapped at him. “Surely 
there ’s a mistake. There can be no reason for police inter- 
ference.” 

His eyes glittered more shrewdly, the drawn parallels 
deepened yet further as he shot back the elevator door. . . . 

It was unmistakably a police officer who admitted me 
for the first and last time to Gertrude’s apartment. On 
hearing my name he nodded, then closed the door firmly 
in the face of Buttons, who had lingered. 

“He’s been warned not to tip off the press,” said the 
police officer, “but it’s just as well to be cautious.” 

“The press? What do you mean?” I asked, still incred- 
ulous. “Is it a New York custom for police to enter a 
house of mourning ? ” I was aware as I spoke of repressed 
voices murmuring in an adjoining room. 

“I’m Sergeant Conlon,” he answered, “in charge here 
till the coroner comes. He should make it by seven. If 
you’re the poor lady’s husband, you’ll be needed. I’ll 
have to detain you.” 

As he ended, the murmur ended in the adjoining room, 
and Lucette walked out from it. She was wearing an 
evening gown — blue, I think — cut very low, and a twin- 
kling ornament of some kind in her hair. She has fine 
shoulders and beautiful hair. But her face had gone hag- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 161 

gard; she had been weeping; she looked ten years older 
than when I had last seen her. 

“What is it? What is it?” I demanded of her. “I 
know nothing but your telegram ! ’ ’ 

“Looks like murder,” said Sergeant Conlon, dry and 
short. “I wouldn’t talk much if I was you, not till the 
coroner gets here. I’m bound to make notes of what you 
say.” 

For the merest hundredth of a second my scalp prickled, 
my flesh went cold; but sheer incredulity was still strong 
upon me ; it beat back the horror. It was simply not real, 
all this. 

“At least,” I managed, “give me facts — something!” 

Then unreality deepened to utter nightmare, passing all 
bounds of reason. Lucette spoke, and life turned for me 
to sheer prattling madness ; to a gibbering grotesque ! 

“Susan did it!” she cried, her voice going high and stri- 
dent, slipping from all control. ‘ ‘ I know it ! I know she 
did! I know it! Wasn’t she with her? Alone with her? 
Who else could have done it! Who else! It’s in her 
Mood!” 

Well, of course, when a woman you have played tag 
with in her girlhood goes mad before you, raves 

How could one act or answer ? Then, too, she had van- 
ished ; or had I really seen her in the flesh at all ? Really 
heard her voice, crying out, . . . 

Sergeant Conlon ’s voice came next ; short, dry, business- 
like. It compelled belief. 

“ I ’ve a question or two for you, Mr. Hunt. This way ; 
steady ! ’ ’ 

I felt his hand under my elbow. 

Gertrude’s apartment was evidently a very large one; 
I had vaguely the sensation of passing down a long hall 
with an ell in it, and so into a small, simply furnished, but 
tasteful room — the sitting-room for her maids, as I later 
decided. Sergeant Conlon shut the door and locked it. 

“That’s not to keep you in,” he said; “it’s to keep 


162 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


others out. Sit down, Mr. Hunt. Smoke somethin’. Let’s 
make ourselves comfortable.” 

The click of the shot bolt in the lock had suddenly, I 
found, restored my power of coordination. It had been 
like the sharp handclap which brings home a hypnotized 
subject to reason and reality. I was now, in a moment, 
not merely myself again, but peculiarly alert and steady of 
nerve, and I gave matter-of-fact assent to Sergeant Con- 
Ion’s suggestions. I lit a cigarette and took possession of 
the most comfortable chair. Conlon remained standing. 
He had refused my cigarettes, but he now lighted a long, 
roughly rolled cigar. 

“I get these from a fellow over on First Avenue,” he 
explained affably. “He makes them up himself. They’re 
not so bad.” 

I attempted a smile and achieved a classic reaction. 
4 ‘ They look — efficient, ’ ’ I said. ‘ 4 And now, sergeant, what 
has happened here ? If I ’ve seemed dazed for the past ten 
minutes, it’s little wonder. I hurried down in response to a 
telegram saying my wife ... You know we’ve lived apart 
for years?” He grunted assent . . . “ Saying she had died 
suddenly. And I walk in, unprepared, on people who 
seem to me to be acting parts in a crook melodrama of the 
crudest type. Be kind enough to tell me what it’s all 
about ! ’ ’ 

Sergeant Conlon ’s gray-blue eyes fixed me as I spoke. 
He was a big, thickset man, nearing middle age ; the bruiser 
build, physically; but with a solidly intelligent-looking 
head and trustworthy eyes. 

“I’ll do that, Mr. Hunt,” he assented. “I got Mrs. 
Arthur to send you that telegram; but I’ll say to you first- 
off, now you’ve come, I don’t suspect you of bein’ mixed 
up in this affair. When I shot that ‘It looks like murder’ 
at you, I did it deliberate. Well— that’s neither here nor 
there; but I always go by the way things strike me. I 
have to.” He twirled a light chair round to face me and 
seated himself, leaning a little forward, his great stubby 
hands propped on his square knees. “Here’s the facts, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


163 


then — what we know are facts: It seems, Mrs. Arthur — 
she’s been visitin’ Mrs. Hunt for two weeks past — she went 
to the opera to-night with a Mr. Phar ; she says you know 
him well.” I nodded. “Durin’ the last act of the opera 
they were located by somebody in the office down there and 
called out to the ’phone — an accident to Mrs. Hunt — see? 
* — important.” Again I nodded. “Mrs. Arthur answered 
the ’phone, and Doctor Askew — he lives in this house, but 
he’s Mrs. Hunt’s reg’lar doctor — well, he was on the wire. 
He just told her to hurry back as fast as she could — and 
she and Mr. Phar hopped a taxi and beat it up here. Doc- 
tor Askew met them at the door, and a couple of scared 
maids. The doc’s a good man — big rep — one of the best. 
He’d taken charge and sent on the quiet for us. I got 
here with a couple of my men soon after Mrs. Arthur ” 

“But ” 

“I know, 1 know!” he stopped me off. “But I want 
you to get it all straight. Mrs. Hunt, sir, was killed — 
somehow — with a long, sharp-pointed brass paper-knife — 
a reg’lar weapon. I’ve examined it. And someone drove 
that thing — and it must ’a’ took some force, believe me! — - 
right through her left eye up to the handle — a full inch 
of metal plumb into her brain!” 

I tried to believe him as he said this ; as, seeing my blank- 
ness, he repeated it for me in other words. For the 
moment it was impossible. This sort of thing must have 
happened in the world, of course — at other times, to 
other people. But not now, not to Gertrude. Certainly 
not to Gertrude; a woman so aloof, so exquisite, self- 
sheltered, class-sheltered, not merely from ugliness, from 
the harsh and brutal, but from everything in life even verg- 
ing toward vulgarity, coarse passion, the unrestrained. . . . 

“That’s the way she was killed, Mr. Hunt — no mistake. 
Now — who did it — and why? That’s the point.” 

At my elbow was a table with a reading-lamp on it, 
a desk-set, a work-basket, belonging, I suppose, to one of 
the maids, and some magazines. One magazine lay just 
before me — The Reel World — a by-product of the great 


164 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


moving-picture industry. I had been staring — unseeingly, 
at first — at a flamboyant advertisement on its cover that 
clamored for my attention, until now, with Conlon’s ques- 
tion, it momentarily gained it. The release of a magnifi- 
cent Superfeature was announced — in no quavering terms. 
“The Sins of the Fathers” it shrieked at me! “All the 
thrilling human suspense”; “virile, compelling”; “brim- 
ming over with the kind of action and adventure your 
audiences crave”; “it delivers the wallop!” 

Instantly, with a new force, Lucette’s outcry swept back 
upon me. “Susan did it! Wasn’t she with her? Alone 
with her ? It’s in her Wood!” 

And at once every faculty of my spirit leaped, with an 
almost supernatural acuteness, to the defense of the one 
being on earth I wholly loved. All sense of unreality van- 
ished. Now for it — since it must be so! Susan and I, if 
need be, against the world! 

“Go on, sergeant. What’s your theory?” 

“Never mind my theory! I’d like to get yours first — 
when I’ve given you all I know.” 

1 ‘ All right, then ! But be quick about it ! ” 

“Easy, Mr. Hunt! It’s not as simple as all that. Well, 
here it is: Somewhere round ten o’clock, a Miss Blake — 
a magazine-writer livin’ on West 10th Street — your ward, 
I understand ” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, she calls here, alone, and asks for Mrs. Arthur. 
Mrs. Hunt’s personal maid — English; she’s no chicken 
either — she lets her in and says Mrs. Arthur isn’t here — 
see — and didn’t the door boy tell her so? Yes, says Miss 
Blake, but she’ll wait for her anyway. The maid — name 
of Iffley — says she thought that was queer, so she put it to 
Miss Blake that maybe she’d better ask Mrs. Hunt. Oh, 
says Miss Blake, I thought she was out, too. But it seems 
Mrs. Hunt was in her private sittin’ room; she’d had a 
slight bilious attack, and she ’d got her corsets off and some- 
thin ’ loose on, the way women do, and was all set for a 
good read. So the maid didn’t think she could see Miss 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


165 


Blake, but anyhow she took in her card — and Mrs. Hunt 
decided to see her. That maid Iffley ’s an intelligent 
woman; she’s all broke up, but she ain’t hysterical like the 
cook — who didn’t see nothin’ anyway. The parlor maid 
was havin’ her night off, but she’s back now, too, and 
I’ve got ’em all safe where they can’t talk to outsiders, 
yet. I don’t want this thing in the papers to-morrow, 
not if I can help it; I want to keep it dark till I know 
better where I’m gettin’ off.” 

“Right!” I approved. “What’s the maid’s story?” 

“Well, I’ve questioned her pretty close, and I think 
it’s to be relied on. It hits me that way. Mrs. Hunt, she 
says, when she took in Miss Blake’s card, was lyin’ on her 
couch in a long trailin ’ thing— what ladies call a negligee. ’ ’ 

“Yes?” 

“And she was cuttin’ the pages of some new book with 
that paper-knife I spoke of.” 

“Yes?” 

“And her dog, a runty little French bull, was sleepin’ 
on the rug beside the couch.” 

“What does that matter?” 

“More’n you’d think! He’s got a broken leg — provin’ 
some kind of a struggle must ’a’ ” 

“I see. Go on!” 

“Well, Mrs. Hunt, the maid says, looked at Miss Blake’s 
card a minute and didn’t say anythin’ special, but seemed 
kind of puzzled. Her only words was, ‘Yes, I ought to see 
her.’ So the maid goes for Miss Blake and shows her to 
the door, which she’d left ajar, and taps on it for her, 
and Mrs. Hunt calls to come in. So Miss Blake goes in and 
shuts the door after her, and the maid comes back to this 
room we’re in now — it’s round the corner of the hall from 
Mrs. Hunt’s room — see? But she don’t much more than 
get here — just to the door — when she hears the dog give a 
screech and then go on cryin’ like as if he’d been hurt. 
The cook was in here, too, and she claims she heard a kind 
of jarrin’ sound, like somethin’ heavy failin’; but Iffley — 
that’s the maid, they call her Iffley — says all she noticed 


166 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


was the dog. Anyway she listened a second, then she 
started for Mrs. Hunt ’s room — and the cook, bein ’ nervous, 
locked herself in here and sat with her eyes tight shut and 
her fingers in her ears. Fact. She says she can’t bear 
nothin’ disagreeable. Too bad about her, ain’t it!” 

* ‘ And then ? ” I protested, crossly. 

“Well, Mr. Hunt, when the Iffley woman turned the 
hall corner — the door of your poor wife’s room opens, and 
Miss Blake walks out. She had the paper-knife in her right 
hand, and the knife and her hand w r as all bloody ; her left 
hand was bloody too; and we’ve found blood on her clothes 
since. There was a queer, vacant look about her — that’s 
what the maid says. She didn’t seem to see anythin’. 
Naturally, the maid was scared stiff — but she got one look 
in at the door anyway — that was enough for her. She was 
too scared even to yell, she says. Paralyzed — she just 
flopped back against the wall half faintin’. 

“And then she noticed somethin’ that kind of brought 
her to again ! Mr. Hunt, that young woman, Miss Blake— 
she’d gone quiet as you please and curled herself down on 
a rug in the hallway — that bloody knife in her hand — and 
she was either dead or fast asleep ! And then the doorbell 
rang, and the Iffley woman says she don’t know how she got 
past that prostrate figger on the rug — her very words, 
Mr. Hunt — that prostrate figger on the rug — but she did, 
somehow ; got to the door. And when she opened it, there 
was Doctor Askew and the elevator man. And then she 
passed out. And I must say I don’t much blame her, 
considerin’.” 

“Where’s Miss Blake now?” I sharply demanded. 

“She’s still fast asleep, Mr. Hunt — to call it that. The 
doc says it’s — somethin’ or other — due to shock. Same 
as a trance.” 

I started up. “Where is Doctor Askew? I must see 
him at once!” 

“We’ve laid Miss Blake on the bed in Mrs. Arthur’s 
room. He ’s observin ’ her. ’ ’ 

4 ‘ Take me there. ’ ’ 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


167 


‘‘I’ll do that, Mr. Hunt. But I’ll ask you a question 
first — straight. Is there any doubt in your mind that that 
young lady — your ward — killed Mrs. Hunt ? ’ ’ 

I met his gray-blue glance directly, pausing a moment 
before I spoke. “Sergeant Conlon,” I replied, while a 
— meteor-shower of speculation shot through me with the 
rapidity of light waves, ‘ ‘ there is no doubt whatever in my 
mind: Miss Blake could not — and so did not — kill my 
wife. ’ ’ 

“Who did, then?” 

“Wait! Let me first ask you a question, sergeant: Who 
sent for Doctor Askew ? ’ ’ 

“That’s the queerest part of it; Miss Blake did.” 

“Ah! How?” 

“There’s a ’phone in Mrs. Hunt’s sittin’ room. Miss 
Blake called the house operator, gave her name and loca- 
tion, and said not to waste a moment — to send up a doctor 
double-quick!” 

“Is that all she said?” 

“No. The operator tells me she said Mrs. Hunt had had 
a terrible accident and was dyin’.” 

“You’re certain she said ‘accident’?” 

“The girl who was at the switchboard — name of Joyce — 
she’s sure of it.” 

I smiled, grimly enough. “Then that is exactly what 
occurred, sergeant — a terrible accident; hideous. Your 
question is answered. Nobody killed Mrs. Hunt — unless 
you are so thoughtless or blasphemous as to call it an act 
of God!” 

“Oh, come on now!” he objected, shaking his head, but 
not, I felt, with entire conviction. “No,” he continued 
stubbornly, “I been turnin’ that over too. But there’s no 
way an accident like that could ’a’ happened. It’s not 
possible!” 

“Fortunately,” I insisted, “nothing else is possible! 
Are you asking me to believe that a young, sensitive girl, 
with an extraordinary imaginative sympathy for others — 
a girl of brains and character, as all her friends have rea- 


168 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


son to know — asking me to believe that she walked coolly 
into my wife’s room this evening, rushed savagely upon 
her, wrested a paper knife from her hand, and then found 
the sheer brute strength of will and arm to thrust it 
through her eye deep into her brain? Are you further 
asking me to believe that having done this frightful thing 
she kept her wits about her, telephoned at once for a doc- 
tor — being careful to call her crime an accident — and 
so passed at once into a trance of some kind and walked 
from the room with the bloody knife in her hand? What 
possible motive could be strong enough to drive such a 
girl to such a deed?” 

“Jealousy,” said Sergeant Conlon. “She wanted you — 
and your wife stood in her way. That’s what I get from 
Mrs. Arthur.” 

“I see. But the three or four persons who know Miss 
Blake and me best will tell you how absurd that is, and 
you’ll find their reasons for thinking so are very convinc- 
ing. Is Mr. Phar still about?” 

“He is. I’ve detained him.” 

“What does he think of Mrs. Arthur’s nonsensical 
theory ? ’ ’ 

“He’s got a theory of his own,” said Conlon; “and it 
happens to be the same as mine.” 

“Well?” 

“Mr. Phar says Miss Blake’s own father went mad — 
all of a sudden; cut some fancy woman’s throat, and his 
own after! He thinks history’s repeated itself, that’s all. 
So do I. Only a crazy woman could ’a’ done this — just 
this way. A strong man in his senses couldn’t ’a’ drove 
that paper-knife home like that ! But when a person goes 
mad, sir, all rules are off. I seen too many cases. Things 
happen you can’t account for. Take the matter of that 
dog now— his broken leg, eh? What are you to make of 
that ? And take this queer state she’s in. There ’s no doubt 
in my mind, Mr. Hunt — the poor girl’s gone crazy, some- 
how. You nor me can’t tell how nor why. But it’s back 
of all this — that’s sure.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


169 


Throughout all this coarse nightmare, this insane break 
in Nature, as I have called it and must always regard it, 
let me at least be honest. As Conlon spoke, for the tiniest 
fraction of a second a desolating fear darted through me, 
searing every nerve with white-hot pain. Was it true? 
Might it not conceivably be true? But this single light- 
ning-thrust of doubt passed as it came. No, not as it came, 
for it blotted all clearness, all power of voluntary thought 
from my mind ; but it left behind it a singular intensity of 
vision. Even as the lightning-pang vanished, and while 
time yet stood still, a moving picture that amounted to 
hallucination began to play itself out before me. It was 
like 

. . . that last 

Wild pageant of the accumulated past 
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man. 

I saw Susan shutting the door of a delicately panelled 
Georgian room, and every detail of this room — a room I 
had never entered in the flesh — was distinct to me. Given 
time, I could have inventoried its every object. I saw Ger- 
trude lying on — not a couch, as Conlon had called it — on a 
chaise-longue , a book with a vivid green cover in her left 
hand, a bronze paper knife with a thin, pointed blade in 
her right. She was holding it with the knuckles of her 
hand upward, her thumb along the handle, and the point 
of the blade turned to her left, across and a little in toward 
her body. She was wearing a very lovely neglige , a true 
creation, all in filmy tones of old gold. On a low-set tip- 
table at her elbow stood a reading-lamp, and a small coal- 
black French bull lay asleep on a superb Chinese rug — lay 
close in by the chaise-longue , just where a dropped hand 
might caress him. A light silky-looking coverlet of a pecu- 
liar dull blue, harmonizing with certain tones of the rug, 
was thrown across Gertrude’s feet. 

As Susan shut the door, the little bull pricked up his 
bat-ears and started to uncurl, but Gertrude must have 
spoken to him, for he settled back again— not, however, to 


170 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


sleep. It was all a picture; I heard no sounds. Then I 
saw Gertrude put down her book on the table and swing 
her feet from the chaise-longue, meaning to rise and greet 
Susan. But, as she attempted to stand up, the light cover- 
let entangled her feet and tripped her ; she lost her balance, 
tried with a violent, awkward lurch of her whole body to 
recover herself, and stamped rather than stepped full on 
the dog’s forepaws. He writhed, springing up between her 
feet — the whole grotesque catastrophe was, in effect, a 
single, fatal gesture! — and Gertrude, throwing her hands 
instinctively before her face, fell heavily forward, the 
length of her body, prone. I saw Susan rush toward 

her And the psychic reel flickered out, blanked. . . . 

I needed to see no more. 

4 ‘Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Hunt?” Conlon was 
asking. 

‘ ‘ No, ’ ’ I said bluntly. * ‘ No madwoman would have sum- 
moned a doctor. Miss Blake called it a terrible accident. 
It was. Her present state is due to the horror of it. When 
she wakes, it will all be explained. Now take me to her.” 

Conlon ’s gray-blue glance fixed me once more. “All 
right,” he grunted, “I’ve no objections. But I’d ’a’ 
thought your first wish would ’a’ been to see your wife.” 

“No,” I replied. “Mrs. Hunt separated from me years 
ago, for reasons of her own. I bore her no ill will; in a 
sense, I respected her, admired her. Understand me, Ser- 
geant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her life, and 
her death in this stupid way — oh, it’s indecent, damnable! 
A cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and 
can do nothing now. But I prefer to remember her as she 
was. She would prefer it, too.” 

‘ * Come on, then, ’ ’ said Conlon ; pretty gruffly, I thought. 

He unlocked the door. 

hi 

It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision 
been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the 
details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude’s 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


171 


boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its 
own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, how- 
ever, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon’s bulky form 
down the hall to Lucette’s bedroom. Whence had this 
vision, this psychic reel come to me ? What was its source ? 
How could the mere fact of it — clearing, as it did, at least, 
all perplexities from my own mind — have occurred? For 
the moment I could find no answer ; the mystery had hap- 
pened, had worked, but remained a mystery. 

Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, 
mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less 
casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, any- 
thing of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing 
acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little 
more; and until now I had had no striking psychical ex- 
periences of my own, and had never, as it happened, 
attended a seance of any kind, either popular or scientific. 
Nevertheless, I could — to put it so — speak that language. 
I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general 
way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investi- 
gators; but I had — honestly speaking — no pet theories of 
my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explana- 
tions, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim 
that thought transference had been incontrovertibly estab- 
lished. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor 
common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, 
and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily 
amused contempt. 

Now at last, in my life’s most urgent crisis, I had had 
news from nowhere; now, furthermore, the being I loved 
and would protect, must protect, had , been thrown by 
psychic shock into that grim borderland, the Abnormal: 
that land of lost voices, of the fringe of consciousness, of 
dissociated personalities, of morbid obsession, and wild 
symbolic dreams. Following on Conlon’s heels, then, I 
entered a softly illumined room — a restrained Louis Seize 
room — a true Gertrude room, with its cool French-gray 
panelled walls ; but entered there as into sinister darkness, 


172 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


as if groping for light. The comfortably accustomed, the 
predictable, I felt, lay all behind me; I must step warily 
henceforth among shifting shadows and phosphoric blurs. 
The issues were too terrifying, too vast, for even one little 
false move; Susan’s future, the very health of her soul, 
might depend now upon the blundering clumsiness or the 
instinctive tact with which I attempted to pick and choose 
my way. It was with a secret shuddering of flesh and 
spirit that I entered that discreet, faultless room. 

Susan was lying on the low single French bed, a coverlet 
drawn over her; they had removed her trim tailored hat, 
the jacket of her dark suit, and her walking-boots, leaving 
them on the couch by the silk-curtained windows, where 
they had perhaps first placed her. She had not dressed for 
the evening before coming up to Gertrude’s; it was evi- 
dently to have been a businesslike call. Her black weblike 
hair — smoky, I always called it, to tease her ; it never fell 
lank or separated into strings — had been disordered, and 
a floating weft of it had drifted across her forehead and 
hung there. Her face was moon-white, her lips pale, the 
lines of cheek and chin had sharpened, her eyes were 
closed. It was very like death. My throat tightened and 
ached. . . . 

Doctor Askew stood across the bed from us, looking down 
at her. 

“Here’s Mr. Hunt,” said Conlon, without further intro- 
duction. “He wants to see you.” Then he stepped back 
to the door and shut it, remaining over by it, at some dis- 
tance from the bed. His silence was expressive. “Now 
show me!” it seemed to say. “This may be a big case for 
me and it may not. If not, I’m satisfied; I’m ready for 
anything. Go on, show me!” 

Doctor Askew was not, as I had expected to find him, 
old; nor even middle-aged; an expectation caught, I pre- 
sume, from Conlon ’s laconic “One of the best — a big rep”; 
he was, I now estimated, a year or so younger than I. I 
had never heard of him and knew nothing about him, but 
I liked him at once when he glanced humorously up at 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


173 


Conlon ’s 1 1 He wants to see you,” nodded to me, and said: 
“I’ve been hoping you’d come soon, Mr. Hunt. I’ve a 
mii\d to try something here — if you’ve no objection to an 
experiment ? ’ ’ 

He was a short man, not fat, but thickset like Conlon; 
only, with a higher-strung vitality, carrying with it a sense 
of intellectual eagerness and edge. He had a sandy, 
freckled complexion, bronzy, crisp-looking hair with red- 
dish gleams in it, and an unmistakably red, aggressive mus- 
tache, close-clipped but untamed. Green-blue eyes. A 
man, I decided, of many intensities; a willful man; but 
thoughtful, too, and seldom unkind. 

4 ‘ Why did you wait for my permission ? ” I asked. 

“I shouldn’t have — much longer,” he replied, his eyes 
returning to Susan’s unchanging face. “But I’ve read 
one or two of your essays, so I know something of the feel 
of your mind. It occurred to me you might be useful. 
And besides, I badly need some information about this” — 
he paused briefly — “this very lovely child.” Again he 
paused a moment, adding: “This is a singular case, Mr. 
Hunt — and likely to prove more singular as we see it 
through. I acted too impulsively in sending for Conlon; 
I apologize. It’s not a police matter, as I at first supposed. 
However, I hope there ’s no harm done. Conlon is holding 
his horses and trying to be discreet. Aren’t you, Conlon?” 

“What’s the idea?” muttered Conlon, from the door- 
way; Conlon was not used to being treated thus, de haut 
en has. “Even if that poor little girl’s crazy, we’ll have 
to swear out a warrant for her. It’s a police matter all 
right. ’ ’ 

“I think not,” said Doctor Askew, dismissing Conlon 
from the conversation. “Have you ever,” he then asked 
me, “seen Miss Blake like this before?” 

I was about to say “No !” with emphasis, when a sudden 
memory returned to me — the memory of a queer, crumpled 
little figure lying on the concrete incline of the Eureka 
Garage; curled up there, like an unearthed cutworm, 


174 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


round a shining dinner-pail. “Yes,” I replied instead; 
“once — I think.” 

“You think?” 

I sketched the occasion for him and explained all its 
implications as clearly and briefly as I could ; and while I 
talked thus across her bed Susan ’s eyes did not open ; she 
did not stir. Doctor Askew heard me out, as I felt, intently, 
but kept his eye meanwhile — except for a keen glance or 
two in my direction — on Susan ’s face. 

“All right,” he said, when I had concluded; “that 
throws more or less light. There’s nothing to worry us, at 
least, in Miss Blake’s condition. Under psychical trauma 
— shock — she has a tendency to pass into a trance state — 
amounting practically to one of the deeper stages of hyp- 
nosis. She’ll come out of it sooner or later — simply wake 
up — if we leave her alone. Perhaps, after all, that’s the 
wisest thing for us to do.” 

On this conclusion he walked away from the bed, as if 
it ended the matter, and lit a cigarette. 

“Well, Conlon,” he grinned, “we’re making a night of 
it, eh? Come, let’s all sit down and talk things over.” He 
seated himself on the end of the couch as he spoke, loung- 
ing back on one elbow and crossing his knees. “I ought 
to tell you, Mr. Hunt, ’ ’ he added, 1 ‘ that nervous disorders 
are my specialty; more than that, indeed — my life! I 
studied under Janet in Paris, and later put in a couple 
ot years as assistant physician in the Clinic of Psychiatry, 
Zurich. Did some work, too, at Vienna — with Stekel and 
Freud. So I needn’t say a problem of this kind is simply 
meat and drink to me. I wouldn’t have missed it for 
anything in the world!” 

I was a little chilled by his words, by an attitude that 
seemed to me cold-bloodedly professional; nevertheless, I 
joined him, drawing up a chair, and Conlon gradually 
worked his way toward us, though he remained standing. 

“What I want to know, doc,” demanded Conlon, “is 
why you’ve changed your mind?” 

“I haven’t,” Doctor Askew responded. “I can’t have, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


175 


because I haven ’t yet formed an opinion. I 'm just begin- 
ning to — and even that may take me some time/’ He 
turned to me. * ‘ What ’s your theory, Mr. Hunt ? ’ ’ 

I was prepared for this question; my mind had been 
busying itself foresightedly with every possible turn our 
conversation was likely to take. All my faculties were 
sharpened by strain, by my pressing sense that Susan's 
future, for good or evil, might somehow be linked to my 
lightest word. I had determined, then, in advance, not to 
speak in Conlon’s presence of my inexplicable vision, not 
to mention it at all to anyone unless some unexpected turn 
of the wheel might make it seem expedient. I could use it 
to Susan's advantage, I believed, more effectively by 
indirection ; I endeavored to do so now. 

4 4 My theory?" I queried. 

“As to how Mrs. Hunt met her death. However pain- 
ful, we’ve got to face that out, sooner or later." 

“Naturally. But I have no theory," I replied; “I have 
an unshakable conviction." 

“Ah! Which is " 

‘ 1 That the whole thing was accidental, of course ; just as 
Miss Blake affirmed it to be over the telephone." 

“You believe that because she affirmed it?" 

4 1 Exactly. ' ' 

“That won't go down with the coroner," struck in Con- 
Ion. “How could it? I'd like to think it, well enough — 
but it don 't with me!” 

“Wait, Conlon!" suggested Doctor Askew, sharply. 
“I’ll conduct this inquiry just now, if you don’t mind — 
and if Mr. Hunt will be good enough to answer." 

“Why not?" I replied. 

“Thank you. Conlon’s point is a good one, all the same. 
Have you been able to form any reasonable notion of how 
such an accident could have .occurred?" 

“Yes." 

“The hell you have!" exclaimed Conlon excitedly, not 
meaning, I think, to be sarcastic. “Why, you haven’t even 


176 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

been in there’ ’ — he referred to Gertrude’s boudoir — “or 
seen the body ! ’ ’ 

“No,” I responded, “but you and Doctor Askew have, 
so you can easily put me right. Extraordinary as the 
whole thing is — the one deadly chance in perhaps a million 
— there’s nothing impossible about it. Merely from the 
facts you’ve given me, Sergeant Conlon, I can reconstruct 
the whole scene — come pretty near it, at any rate. But the 
strength of my conviction is based on other grounds — don ’t 
lose sight of that ! Miss Blake didn’t kill Mrs. Hunt ; she’s 
incapable of such an action ; and if she didn ’t, no one else 
did. An accident is the only alternative.” 

“Well, then,” grunted Conlon, “tell us about it! It’ll 
take some tellin’!” 

“Hold on!” exclaimed Doctor Askew before I could 
begin. “Sorry, Mr. Hunt — but you remember, perhaps — 
when you first came in — I had half a mind to try some- 
thing — an experiment?” I nodded. “Well, I’ve made up 
my mind. We’ll try it right now, before it’s too late. If it 
succeeds, it may yield us a few facts to go on. Your sup- 
positions can come afterward.” 

I felt, as he spoke, that something behind his words belied 
their rudeness, that their rudeness was rather for Conlon ’s 
benefit than for mine. He got up briskly and crossed to 
the bedside. There after a moment he turned and motioned 
us both to join him. 

As we did so, tiptoeing instinctively: “Yes — this is for- 
tunate,” he said; “she’s at it again. Look.” 

Susan still lay as I had first seen her, with shut eyes, 
her arms extended outside the coverlet; but she was no 
longer entirely motionless. Her left arm lay relaxed, the 
palm of her left hand upward. I had often seen her hands 
lie inertly thus in her lap, the palms upward, in those 
moments of silent withdrawal which I have more than once 
described. But now her right hand was turned downward, 
the fingers slightly contracted, as if they held a pen, and 
the hand was creeping slowly on the coverlet from left to 
right ; it would creep slowly in this way for perhaps eight 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


177 


inches, then draw quickly back to its point of starting and 
repeat the manoeuvre. It was uncanny, this patient repeti- 
tion — over and over — of a single restricted movement. 

4 ‘My God,” came from Conlon in a husky whisper, “is 
she dyin’ — or what?” 

“Far from it!” said Doctor Askew, his abrupt, crisp 
speech in almost ludicrous contrast to Conlon ’s sudden awe. 
‘ ‘ Get me some paper from that desk over there, Conlon. A 
pad, if possible.” 

He drew out a pencil from his pocket as he spoke. Con- 
lon hesitated an instant, then obeyed, tiptoeing ponder- 
ously, with creaking boots, over to a daintily appointed 
writing-table, and returning with a block of linen paper. 
Doctor Askew, meanwhile, holding the pencil between his 
teeth, had lifted Susan ’s unresisting shoulders — too 
roughly, I thought — from the bed. 

“Stick that other pillow under her,” he ordered me, 
sharply enough in spite of the impeding pencil. “A little 
farther down — so!” 

Susan now lay, no less limply than before, with her 
trunk, shoulders, and head somewhat raised. Her right 
hand had ceased its slow, patient movement. 

“What’s the idea?” Conlon was muttering. “What’s 
the idea, doc?” 

Whatever it was, it was evident that Conlon didn’t 
like it. 

“Got the pad?” demanded Doctor Askew. “Oh, good! 
Here!” 

He almost snatched the pad from Conlon and tore the 
blotter cover from it; then he slipped it beneath Susan’s 
right palm and finally thrust his pencil between her curved 
fingers, its point resting on the linen block, which he 
steadied by holding one corner between finger and thumb. 
For a moment the hand remained quiet; then it began to 
write. I say “it” advisedly; no least trace of conscious- 
ness or purposed control could be detected in Susan’s 
impassive face or heavily relaxed body. Susan was not 
writing ; her waking will had no part in this strange autom- 


178 THE BOOK OF SUSAN 

atism; so much, at least, was plain to me and even to 
Conlon. 

‘‘Mother of God/’ came his throaty whisper again, “it’s 
not her that’s doin’ it. Who’s pushin’ that hand?” 

“It’s not sperits, Conlon,” said Doctor Askew ironi- 
cally ; “you can take my say-so for that.” With the words 
he withdrew the scribbled top sheet from the pad, glanced 
at it, and handed it to me. The hand journeyed on, cover- 
ing a second sheet as I read. “That doesn’t help us much, 
does it?” was Doctor Askew’s comment, when I had de- 
voured the first sheet. 

“No,” I replied; “not directly. But I’ll keep this if 
you don ’t mind. ’ ’ 

I folded the sheet and slipped it into my pocket. Doctor 
Askew removed the second sheet. 

“Same sort of stuff,” he grunted, passing it over to me. 
“It needs direction.” And he began addressing — not 
Susan , to Conlon ’s amazement — the hand! “What hap- 
pened in Mrs. Hunt’s room to-night?” he demanded firmly 
of the hand. “Tell us exactly what happened in Mrs. 
Hunt’s room to-night! It’s important. What happened 
in Mrs. Hunt ’s room to-night ? ’ ’ 

Always addressing the hand, his full attention fixed upon 
it as it moved, he repeated this burden over and over. “We 
must know exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt’s room 
to-night! Tell us what happened in Mrs. Hunt’s room 
to-night. . . . What happened in Mrs. Hunt’s room to- 
night?” 

Conlon and I both noted that Susan ’s breathing, hitherto 
barely to be detected, gradually grew more labored while 
Doctor Askew insisted upon and pressed home his monot- 
onous refrain. He had so placed himself now that he could 
follow the slowly pencilled words. More and more deliber- 
ately the hand moved ; then it paused. . . . 

“What happened in Mrs. Hunt’s room to-night?” 
chanted Doctor Askew. 

“This ain’t right,” muttered Conlon. “It’s worse ’n the 
third degree. I don’t like it.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 179 

He creaked uneasily away. The hand moved again, hesi- 
tatingly, briefly. 

“Ah,” chanted Doctor Askew — always to the hand — “it 
was an accident, was it? How did it happen? Tell us 
exactly how it happened — exactly how it happened. We 
must know. . . . How did the accident happen in Mrs. 
Hunt’s room to-night?” 

Again the hand moved, more steadily this time, and 
seemingly in response to his questions. 

Doctor Askew glanced up at me with an encouraging 
smile. “We’ll get it now — all of it. Don’t worry. The 
hand’s responding to control.” 

Though sufficiently astonished and disturbed by this per- 
formance, I was not, like Conlon, wholly at sea. Sober 
accounts of automatic writing could be found in all modern 
psychologies; I had read some of these accounts — given 
with all the dry detachment of clinical data. They had 
interested me, not thrilled me. No supernatural power was 
involved. It was merely the comparative rarity of such 
phenomena in the ordinary normal course of experience 
that made them seem awe-inspiring. And yet, the hand 
there, solely animate, patiently writing in entire inde- 
pendence of a consciously directing will ! My spine, 

too, like Conlon ’s, registered an authentic shiver of protest 
and atavistic fear. But, throughout, I kept my tautened 
wits about me, busily working ; and they drove me now on 
a sudden inspiration to the writing-table, where I seized 
pen and paper and wrote down with the most collected 
celerity a condensed account of — for so I phrased it — 
“what must, from the established facts, be supposed to 
have taken place in Mrs. Hunt’s boudoir, just after Miss 
Blake had entered it.” I put this account deliberately as 
my theory of the matter, as the one solution of the problem 
consistent with the given facts and the known characters 
involved ; and I had barely concluded when I was startled 
to my feet by Doctor Askew’s voice — raised cheerily above 
its monotonous murmur of questions to the hand — calling 
my name. 


180 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“What are you up to, Mr. Hunt? My little experiment's 
over. It's a complete success." 

He was walking toward me with a handful of loose scrib- 
bled sheets from the linen block. 

‘ ‘ How is she now ? ’ ’ I inquired anxiously, as if she had 
just been subjected to a dangerous operation. 

“All right. Deep under. I shan't try to pull her out 
yet. Much better for her to come out of it naturally her- 
self. I suggest we darken the room and leave her." 

“That suits me/" I just caught from Conlon, over by 
the door. 

“She’ll be quite safe alone?" 

“Absolutely. I want to read this thing to Conlon and 
Mrs. Arthur and Mr. Phar, before the coroner gets here. 
I rather think they’ll find it convincing." 

“Good," I responded. “But, first of all, let me read 
them this. I’ve just jotted down my analysis of the whole 
situation. It’s a piece of cold constructive reasoning from 
the admitted data, and I shall be greatly surprised if it 
doesn’t on the whole agree with what you’ve been able to 
obtain." 

Doctor Askew stared at me a moment curiously. “And 
if it doesn’t agree?" he asked. 

“If it don’t," exclaimed Conlon, with obvious relief, “it 
may help us, all the same ! This thing can ’t be settled by 
that kind of stuff, doc." He gave a would-be contemptuous 
nod toward Doctor Askew’s handful of scrawled pages. 
“That’s no evidence — whatever it says. Where does it 
come from? Who’s givin’ it? It can’t be sworn to on the 
Book, that’s certain — eh? Let’s get outa here and begin 
to talk sense!" Conlon opened the door eagerly, and 
creaked off through the hall. 

“Go with him," ordered Doctor Askew. “I’ll put out 
the lights." Then he touched my elbow and gave me a 
slight nod. “I see your point of course. But I hope to 
God you’ve hit somewhere near it?" 

‘ 4 Doctor, ’ ’ I replied, ‘ ‘ this account of mine is exact. I ’ll 
tell you later how I know that." 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


181 


“Ah!” he grunted, with a green-blue flash of eyes. 
“What a lucky devil I am! . . . But I've felt all along 
this would prove a rewarding case.” 

IV 

Up to this point I have been necessarily thus detailed, 
but I am eager now to win past the cruder melodrama of 
this insanely disordered night. I am eager to win back 
from all these damnable and distracting things to Susan. 
This book is hers, not mine; it is certainly not Sergeant 
Conlon ’s or Doctor Askew ’s. So you will forgive me, and 
understand, if I present little more than a summary of the 
immediately following hours. 

We found Maltby and Lucette in the drawing-room, 
worn out with their night-long vigil; Maltby, somnolent 
and savage; Lucette still keyed high, suffering from ex- 
asperated nerves which — perhaps for the first time in her 
life — she could not control. They were seated as far apart 
as the room permitted, having long since talked themselves 
out, and were engaged, I think, in tacitly hating one 
another. The situation was almost impossible ; yet I knew 
I must dominate it somehow, and begin by dominating 
myself — and in the end, with Conlon ’s and Doctor Askew ’s 
help, I succeeded. Conlon, I confess, proved to be an unex- 
pected ally all through. 

“Now, Mrs. Arthur, and you, Mr. Phar,” he stated at 
once as we entered the drawing-room together, “I’ve 
brought Mr. Hunt in here to read you his guess at what 
happened last evenin’. Doctor Askew ’ll be with us in a 
minute, and he’s got somethin’ to lay before you. . . . 
No ; Miss Blake ’s not come round yet. The doc ’ll explain 
about her. But we’ll hear from Mr. Hunt first, see? I’ve 
examined him and I’m satisfied he’s straight. You’ve 
known him long enough to form your own opinions, but 
that’s mine. Oh, here’s the doc! Go on, Mr. Hunt.” 

With this lead, I was at length able to persuade Lucette 
and Maltby to listen, sullenly enough, to my written anal- 


182 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


ysis. My feeling toward them both, though better con- 
cealed, was quite as hostile as theirs toward me, but I saw 
that I caught their reluctant attention and that Maltby 
was somewhat impressed by what I had written, and by my 
interjected amplifications of the more salient points. I had 
been careful to introduce no facts not given me by Sergeant 
Conlon, and when I had finished, ignoring Lucette’s instant 
murmur of impatience and incredulity, I turned to him 
and said : ‘ ‘ Sergeant, is there anything known to you and 
not known to me — any one detail discovered during your 
examination of Mrs. Hunt’s boudoir, say — which makes my 
deductions impossible or absurd ? ’ ’ 

He reflected a moment, then acknowledged: “Well, no, 
Mr. Hunt, Things might ’a’ happened like that; maybe 
they did. But just sayin’ so don’t prove they did!” 

1 1 May I ask you a few questions ? ’ ’ 

“Sure.” 

“Had Mrs. Hunt’s body been moved when you arrived? 
I mean, from the very spot where it fell ? ’ ’ 

“It had and it hadn’t. The doc here found her lyin’ 
face down on the floor, right in front of the couch. He 
had to roll her over on her back to examine her. That’s 
all. The body’s there now like that, covered with a sheet. 
Nothin’ else has been disturbed.” 

“The body was lying face down, you say?” 

“Yes,” struck in Doctor Askew; “it was.” 

“At full length?” 

“Yes.” 

“Isn’t that rather surprising?” 

‘ ‘ Unquestionably. ’ ’ 

“How do you account for the position?” 

“There’s only one possible explanation,” replied Doctor 
Askew, as if giving expert testimony from a witness box; 

‘ ‘ a sudden and complete loss of balance, pitching the body 
sharply forward, accompanied by such a binding of the 
legs and feet as to prevent any instinctive movement 
toward recovery.” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 183 

“ Thank you. Were there any indications of such bind- 
ing?” 

“Yes. Mrs. Hunt's trailing draperies had somehow 
wound themselves tightly about her legs below the knee, 
and I judge her feet were further impeded by a sort of 
coverlet which I found touselled up on the rug beneath 
them.” 

“Grant all that!” growled Maltby. “It points to just 
the opposite of what we 'd all like to think is true. If Mrs. 
Hunt had risen slowly to greet a caller in the usual way- 
well, she wouldn't have gotten herself tangled up. She 
was the last woman in the world to do anything awk- 
wardly. But if she leaped to her feet in terror — what? 
To defend herself — or try to escape ? Don 't you see ? ” 

“Of course we see!” cried Lucette. “It proves every- 
thing ! ' ' 

“Hardly,” I replied. “Try to imagine the scene, Maltby, 
as you seem to believe it occurred. I won’t speak of the 
major impossibility — that Susan, a girl you've known and 
have asked to be your wife, could under any circumstances 
be the author of such a crime! We’ll pass that. Simply 
try to picture the crime itself. Susan, showing no traces 
of unnatural excitement, is conducted to my wife 's boudoir. 
She enters, shuts the door, turns, then rushes at her with 
so hideous an effect of insane fury that Gertrude springs 
up, terrified. Susan — more slightly built than Gertrude, 
remember! — grapples with her, tears a paper knife from 
her hand, and plunges it deep into her eye, penetrating the 
brain. Suppose, if you will, that madness lent her this 
force. But, obviously, for the point of the knife to enter 
the eye in that way, Gertrude must have been fronting 
Susan, her chin well raised. Obviously, the force of such 
a blow would have thrown her head, her whole body, back- 
ward, not forward ; and if her feet were bound, as Doctor 
Askew says they were, she must have fallen backward or 
to one side, certainly not forward at full length, on her 
face." 


184 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


4 ‘You’ve said somethin ’ this time, Mr. Hunt!” exclaimed 
Conlon. ‘ ‘ There ’s a lot to that ! ’ ’ 

Maltby was visibly impressed ; but not Lucette. “As if,” 
she said, “Susan wouldn’t have arranged the body — after- 
ward — in any way she thought to her advantage !” 

“There wasn’t time!” Doctor Askew objected im- 
patiently. “And,” he went on, “it happens that all this is 
futile! I have proof here, corroborating Mr. Hunt’s 
remarkably acute theories in the most positive way.” 

But before reading what Susan’s hand had written, he 
turned to Sergeant Conlon, requesting his close attention, 
and then gave him briefly a popular lecture on the nature 
of automatic writing as understood by a tough-minded 
neurologist with no faith in the supernatural. It was 
really a masterly performance in its way, for he avoided 
the jargon of science and cut down to essentials. 

“Conlon,” he said, “you’ve often forgotten something, 
tried to recall it, and finally given it up. We all have. 
And then some day, when you least expected it and were 
thinking of something else, that forgotten something has 
popped into your mind again — eh ? All right. Where was 
it in the meantime, when you couldn’t put your finger on 
it? Since it eventually came back, it must have been pre- 
served somewhere. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? But 
when you say something you’ve forgotten ‘pops into your 
mind’ again, you’re wrong. It’s never been out of your 
mind. What too many of us still don’t know is that a 
man’s mind has two parts to it. One part, much the small- 
est, is consciousness — the part we’re using now, the part 
we’re always aware of. The other part is a big dark store- 
house, where pretty much everything we’ve forgotten is 
kept. We’re not aware of the storehouse or the things kept 
in it, so the ordinary man doesn’t know anything about it. 
You’re not aware of your spleen, and wouldn’t know you 
had one if doctors hadn’t cut up a lot of people and found 
spleens in every one of them. You believe you’ve got a 
spleen because we doctors tell you so. Well, I’m telling 
you now that your mind has a big storehouse, where most 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


185 


of the things you’ve forgotten are preserved. We mind- 
doctors call it your Unconscious Mind. All clear so far? 
. . . Good. 

‘ ‘ Now then — when a man ’s hypnotized, it means his con- 
scious mind has been put to sleep, practically, and his 
unconscious mind has, in a sense, waked up. When a man’s 
hypnotized we can fish all sorts of queer things from his 
big storehouse, his unconscious mind; things he didn’t 
know were there, things he’d forgotten. . . . And it’s the 
same with what we call trances. A man in a trance is a 
man whose conscious mind is asleep and whose unconscious 
mind is awake. 

“ That’s exactly Miss Blake’s condition now. The shock 
of what she saw last evening threw her into a trance; she 
doesn’t know what’s going on round her — but her uncon- 
scious mind has a record, a sort of phonograph-record of 
more or less everything that’s ever happened to her, and if 
she speaks or writes in this trance state she ’d simply play 
one of these stored-up records for us; play it just like a 
phonograph, automatically. Her will power’s out of com- 
mission, you see ; in this state she ’s nothing more nor less 
than a highly complicated instrument. And the record she 
plays may be of no interest to anybody; some long-for- 
gotten incident or experience of childhood, for example. 
On the other hand, if we can get the right record going — 
eh? — we’ve every chance of finding out exactly what we 
want to know!” He paused, fixing his already attentive 
pupil with his peculiarly vivid green-blue glance. 

“Now, Conlon, get this — it’s important! I must ask you 
to believe one other thing about the Unconscious Mind — 
simply take it on my say-so, as a proved fact : When the 
conscious mind is temporarily out of business — as under 
hypnotism, or in trance — the unconscious mind, like the 
sensitive instrument it is, will often obey or respond to 
outside suggestions. I can’t go into all this, of course. But 
what I ask you to believe about Miss Blake is this : In her 
present state of trance, at my suggestion, she has played 
the right record for us! She has automatically written 


186 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


down for us an account of her experiences last evening. 
And I assure you this account, obtained in this way, is far 
more reliable and far more complete than any she could 
give us in her normal, conscious, waking state. There’s 
nothing marvellous or weird about it, Conlon. We have 
here” — and he slightly rattled the loose sheets in his hand 
— “simply an automatic record of stored-up impressions. 
Do you see?” 

Conlon grunted that he guessed maybe he saw; at any 
rate, he was willing to be shown. 

Then Doctor Askew read us Susan’s own story of the 
strange, idiotically meaningless accident to Gertrude. As 
it corresponded in every particular with my vision, I shall 
not repeat it ; but it produced an enormous impression on 
Sergeant Conlon and Maltby, and even on Lucette. Taken 
in connection with my independent theory of what must 
have occurred, they found Susan’s story entirely con- 
vincing ; though whether Lucette really found it so or had 
suddenly decided — because of certain uncomfortable accu- 
sations against herself made by Susan’s hand — that the 
whole matter had gone quite far enough and any further 
publicity would be a mistake, I must leave to your later 
judgment. 

As for the coroner, when at length he arrived, he too — 
to my astonishment and unspeakable relief — accepted 
Susan’s automatic story without delay or demur. Here 
was a stroke of sheer good luck, for a grateful change — 
but quite as senseless in itself, when seriously considered, 
as the cruel accident to Gertrude. It merely happened 
that the coroner’s sister was a professional medium, and 
that he and his whole family were ardent believers in 
spiritualism, active missionaries in that cause. He had 
started life as an East Side street-urchin, had the coroner, 
and had scrambled up somehow from bondage to influence, 
fighting his way single-fisted through a hard school that 
does not often foster illusions; but I have never met a 
more eagerly credulous mind. He accepted the automatic 
writing as evidence without a moment’s cavil, assuring us 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 187 

at once that it undoubtedly came as a direct message from 
the dead. 

Doctor Askew’s preliminary explanations he simply 
brushed aside. If Miss Blake in her present trance state, 
which he soon satisfied himself was genuine, had produced 
this message, then her hand had been controlled by a dis- 
embodied spirit — probably Mrs. Hunt’s. There was no 
arguing with the man, and on my part, heaven knows, no 
desire to oppose him! I listened gratefully for one hour 
to his wonder tales of spirit revelations, and blessed him 
when he reluctantly left us — with the assurance that Ger- 
trude’s death would be at once reported as due to an 
unavoidable accident. It was so announced in the noon 
editions of the evening papers. Sergeant Conlon and his 
aids departed by the service elevator, and were soon 
replaced by a shocked and grieved clergyman and a com- 
petent undertaker. The funeral — to take place in New 
Haven — was arranged for ; telegrams were sent ; one among 
them to Phil. Even poor Miss Goucher was at last remem- 
bered and communicated with — only just in time, I fear, 
to save her reason. But of her more in its place. And, 
meanwhile, throughout all this necessary confusion, Susan 
slept on. Noon was past, and she still slept. . . . And 
Doctor Askew and I watched beside her, and talked to- 
gether. 

At precisely seven minutes to three — I was bending over 
her at the moment, studying her face for any sign of stir- 
ring consciousness — she quietly opened her eyes. 

“Ambo,” were her first words, “I believe in God now; 
a God, anyway. I believe in Setebos 99 

v 

In my unpracticed, disorderly way — in the hurry of my 
desire to get back to Susan — I have again overstepped 
myself and must, after all, pause to make certain necessary 
matters plain. There is nothing else for it. I have, on 
reflection, dropped too many threads — the thread of my 


188 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


own vision, the thread of those first two or three pages 
scrawled by Susan before her hand had fully responded to 
Doctor Askew’s control; other weakly fluttering, loose- 
ended threads ! My respect for the great narrative writers 
is increasing enormously, as I bungle onward. “Order is 
heaven’s first law,” and I wish to heaven it might also 
more instinctively be mine ! 

Just after the coroner’s departure Maltby left us, but 
before he left I insisted upon a brief talk with him in 
Lucette’s presence. I was in no mood for tact. 

“Maltby,” I said, “I can’t stop now for anything but 
the plain statement that you’ve been a bad friend — to 
Susan and me. As for you, Lucette, it’s perfectly clear 
now that Susan believes you responsible for spreading a 
slanderous lie about her. Between you, directly or in- 
directly, you’ve managed to get it believed down here that 
Susan has been my mistress and was forced to leave New 
Haven because the scandal had grown notorious. That’s 
why Susan came here, determined to see you, Lucette; 
that’s why Gertrude received her. Gertrude was never 
underhanded, never a sneak. My guess is, that she sus- 
pected you of slandering Susan, but wasn’t sure; and then 
Susan’s unexpected call on you ” 

Lucette flared out at this, interrupting me. “I’m not 
particularly interested in your guesswork, Ambrose Hunt ! 
We’ve had a good deal of it, already. Besides, I’ve a rag- 
ing headache, and I’m too utterly heartsick even to resent 
your insults. But I’ll say this: I’ve very strong reasons 
for thinking that what you call a lying slander is a fact. 
Mr. Phar can tell you why — if he cares to.” 

With that, she walked out of the room, and I did not see 
her again until we met in New Haven at Gertrude’s 
funeral, on which occasion, with nicely calculated pub- 
licity, she was pleased to cut me dead. 

When she had gone I turned on Maltby. 

“WeU?” I demanded. 

Maltby, I saw, was something more than ill-at-ease. 

“Now see here, Boz,” he began, “can’t we talk this over 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


189 


without quarreling? It’s so stupid, I mean — between men 
of the world.’ ’ I waited, without responding. “I’ll be 
frank with you,” he mumbled at me. “Fact is, old man, 
that night — the night Phil Farmer said Susan wanted to 
see you — was waiting for you in your study — remember? 
You promised to rejoin me shortly and talk things out. . . . 
But you didn’t come back. Naturally, I’ve always sup- 
posed since then ” 

“You have a scoundrelly imagination!” I exclaimed. 

His face, green-pale from loss of sleep, slowly mottled 
with purplish stains. 

“Years of friendship,” he stumbled, thick-voiced, 
through broken phrases. “Wouldn’t take that from any 
one else. . . . Not yourself. . . . Question of viewpoint, 

really. ... I’d be the last to blame either of you, if 

However ” 

“Maltby,” I said, “you’re what I never thought you — 
a common or garden cad. That’s my deliberate opinion. 
I’ve nothing more to say to you.” 

For an instant I supposed he was going to strike me. 
It is one of the major disappointments of my life that 
he did not. My fingers ached for his throat. 

Later, with the undertaker efficiently in charge of all 
practical arrangements, and while Susan still hid from us 
behind her mysterious veil, I talked things out with Doctor 
Askew, giving him the whole story of Susan as clearly and 
unreservedly as I could. My purpose in doing so was two- 
fold. I felt that he must know as much as possible about 
Susan before she woke again to what we call reality. What 
I feared was that this shock — which had so profoundly 
and so peculiarly affected her — might, even after the long 
and lengthening trance had passed, leave some mark upon 
her spirit, perhaps even some permanent cloud upon her 
brain. I had read enough of these matters to know that 
my fear was not groundless, and I could see that Doctor 
Askew welcomed my information — felt as keenly as I did 
that he might later be called upon to interpret and deal 
with some perplexing borderland condition of the mind. 


190 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


It was as well at least to be prepared. That was my major 
purpose. But connected with it was another* more self- 
regarding. My own vision, my psychic reel, greatly dis- 
turbed me. It was not orthodox. It could not be explained, 
for example, as something swiftly fabricated from covert 
memories by my unconscious mind, and forced then sharply 
into consciousness by some freak of circumstance, some 
psychic perturbation or strain. 

My vision of the accident itself — of the manner of its 
occurrence — might conceivably have been such a fabrica- 
tion, subconsciously elaborated from the facts given me 
by Conlon; not so my vision of its setting. I had seen in 
vivid detail the interior of a room which I had never 
entered and had never heard described; and every detail 
thus seen was minutely accurate, for I had since examined 
the room and had found nothing in it unfamiliar, nothing 
that did not correspond with what my mind’s eye had 
already noted and remembered. Take merely one instance 
— the pattern and color scheme of the Chinese rug beside 
the chaise-longue. As an amateur in such matters I could 
easily, in advance of physically looking at it, have cata- 
logued that rug and have estimated its value to a collector. 
How then to account for this astounding clairvoyance? I 
could not account for it without widening my whole con- 
ception of what was psychically possible. Seated with Doc- 
tor Askew in the room where Susan lay withdrawn from 
us, from our normal world of limited concrete perceptions, 
I was oppressed as never before by the immensity and 
deluding vagueness of the unknown. What were we, we 
men and women ? Eternal forces, or creatures of an hour ? 
An echo, from days long past returned to me, Phil’s quiet, 
firm voice demanding — of Maltby, wasn’t it? Yes, yes, 
of course — demanding of Maltby: “What is the world , mag 
I ask? And what is Susan?” 

Doctor Askew cross-questioned me - closely as we sat there, 
a little off from Susan, our eyes seldom leaving her face. 
“You must have patience,” he kept assuring me in the 
midst of his questioning. “It will be much better for her 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


191 


to come out of this thing tranquilly, by herself. We’re not 
really wasting time.” When his cross-questioning was 
over he sat silent for a long time, biting at his upper lip, 
tapping one foot — almost irritably, I thought — on the par- 
quet floor. 

“I don’t like it,” he said finally, in his abrupt way. “I 
don’t like it because I believe you’re telling the truth. If 
I could only persuade myself that you are either lying or 
at least drawing a long bow” — he gave a little disgusted 
snort of laughter — “it would be a great relief to me!” 

“Why?” 

“Why? Because you’re upsetting my scientific convic- 
tions. My mind was all tidied up, everything nicely in 
order, and now you come raging through it with this ridicu- 
lous tale of a sudden hallucinating vision — of seeing things 
that you’d never seen, never heard described — whose very 
existence you were completely unaware of ! Damn it ! I ’d 
give almost anything to think you a cheerful liar — or self- 
deceived! But I can’t.” 

* * Still, you must have met with similar cases ? ’ ’ 

“Never, as it happens, with one that I couldn’t explain 
away to my own satisfaction. That’s what irritates me 
now. I can’t explain you away, Mr. Hunt. I believe you 
had that experience just as you describe it. Well, then, if 
you had — what follows ? ” He pulled for a moment or two 
at a stubby end of red mustache. 

‘ ‘ What does ? ” I suggested. 

“One of three things,” he replied, “all equally impos- 
sible. Either your vision — to call it that — was first 
recorded in the mind of another living person and trans- 
ferred thence to yours — or it was not. If it wasn’t, then 
it came direct from God or the devil and was purely mirac- 
ulous! With your kind permission, we’ll rule that out. 
But if it was first recorded in the mind of another living 
person, then we’re forced to accept telepathy — complete 
thought transference from a distance — accept it as a fact. 
I never have so accepted it, and hate like hell to do it now ! 
And even if I could bring myself to accept it, my troubles 


192 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


have only begun. From whose mind was this exact vision 
of the accident to Mrs. Hunt transferred to yours ? So far 
as I can see, the detailed facts of it could have been regis- 
tered in the minds of only two persons — Miss Blake and 
your wife. Isn ’t that so ? ’ ’ 

I agreed. 

“All right. See where that leaves us! At the time you 
received this vision, Miss Blake is lying here in a deep 
trance, unconscious; and your wife is dead. Which of 
these incredible sources of information do you prefer? It’s 
a matter of indifference to me. Either way my entire rea- 
soned conception of the universe topples in ruins ! ’ ’ 

“But surely, ” I protested, “it might have come to me 
from Miss Blake, as you suggest, without our having to 
descend to a belief in spirit communication? Let’s rule 
that out, too ! ’ ’ 

“As you please,” smiled Doctor Askew, pretty grimly. 
“If you find it easier to believe your vision came from Miss 
Blake, do so by all means! Personally, I’ve no choice. I 
can accept the one explanation quite as readily as the 
other. Which means, that as a thinking being I can accept 
neither! Both are — absurd. So I can go no further — 
unless by a sheer act of faith. I’m baffled, you see — in my 
own field; completely baffled. That’s what it comes to. 
And I find it all devilishly annoying and inconvenient. 
Don’t you?” 

I did not reply. For a time I mused, drearily enough, 
turning many comfortless things over in my mind. Then 
I drew from my pocket the three sheets scribbled by 
Susan’s hand, before it had responded to Doctor Askew’s 
insistent suggestions. 

“Doctor,” I asked, handing him the scribbled pages, “in 
view of all I’ve told you, doesn’t what Miss Blake has 
written here strike you as significant? You see,” I added, 
while he glanced through them, “how strongly her re- 
pressed feelings are in revolt against me — against the 
tyranny of my love for her. Doesn’t it seem improbable, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 193 

then, to say the least of it, that my vision could have come 
from that direction ?” 

He was reading the pages through again, more slowly. 
‘ ‘ Jimmy ? ” he queried to himself. 4 ‘ Oh, yes — Jimmy ’s the 
boy you spoke of. I see — I see.” He looked up, and I did 
my best to smile. 

“That’s a bitter dose of truth for me, doctor; but thank 
God it came in this way — came in time !” 

Except for the punctuation, which I have roughly sup- 
plied, the three pages read as follows: 

“A net. No means of escape from it. To escape — some- 
how. Jimmy Only wretchedness for Ambo — for us 

both. How can he care ! Insufferably self-satisfied ; child- 
ishly blind. I won’t — I won’t — not after this. No escape 
from it — my net. But the inner net — Ambo’s — binding 
him, too. Some way out. A dead hand killing things. My 
own father. How he killed and killed — always — more than 
he knew. Blind. Never felt that before as part of me — 
of me. Wrong way round though — it enfolds — smothers. 
I’m tangled there — part of it — forever and ever. Setebos 
— God of my father — Setebos knows. Oh, how could I 
dream myself free of it like others — how could I ! A net — 
all a net — no breaking it. Poor Ambo — and his love too — 
a net. It shan’t hold me. I’ll gnaw through — mouselike. 
I must. Fatal for Ambo now if it holds me. Fatal — 
Setebos — Jimmy will ” 

“Hum,” said Doctor Askew quietly. 

“That doesn’t help me much,” I complained. 

“No,” he responded; “but I can’t see that all this has 
any bearing on the possible source of your vision.” 

“I only thought that perhaps this revelation of a re- 
pressed inner revolt against me ” 

“Yes, I see. But there’s no reasoning about the unthink- 
able. I’ve already said I can make nothing of your vision 
— nothing I’m yet prepared to believe.” He handed the 
three sheets back to me with these words: “But I’m afraid 
your interpretation of this thing is correct. It’s a little 


194 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


puzzling in spots — curious, eh, the references to Setebos ? — 
still, if I were you, Mr. Hunt, I should quietly withdraw 
from a lost cause. It’ll mean less trouble all round in the 
end. ’ ’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘ ‘ These sexual mud- 
dles — it’s better to see ’em out frankly! They’re always 
the devil, anyway! What silly mechanisms we are — how 
Nature makes puppet-fools of us ! That lovely child there 
— she admires you and wants to love you, because you love 
her. Why shouldn’t she? What could be a happier 
arrangement — now? You’ve had your share of marital 
misfortune, I should say. But Nature doesn’t give a damn 
for happy arrangements! God knows what she’s after, I 
don’t ! But just at present she seems to be loading the dice 
for Jimmy — for Jimmy, who perhaps isn’t even interested 
in the game! Well, such — for our misery or amusement — 
is life! And my cigarettes are gone. . . . How about 
yours ?” 

VI 

It did not take Susan long to make it perfectly clear 
to Doctor Askew and me that she had waked from her 
trance to complete lucidity, showing no traces of any of 
the abnormal after-effects we had both been dreading. Her 
first rather surprising words had been spoken just as she 
opened her eyes and before she had quite realized any- 
thing but my familiar presence beside her. They were 
soon followd by an entirely natural astonishment and con- 
fusion. What had happened? Where was she? She sat 
up in bed and stared about her, her eyes coming to rest 
on Doctor Askew’s eager, observant face. 

4 ‘ Who are you ? ’ ’ she asked. 

1 ‘Doctor Askew,” he replied quietly. “Don’t be 
alarmed, Miss Blake. Mr. Hunt and I have been looking 
after you. Not that you’ve been much trouble, ’ ’ he smiled ; 
“on the contrary. You’ve been fast asleep for more than 
twelve hours. We both envy you.” 

For a long two minutes she did not reply. Then, “Oh, 
yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.” Her chin began to quiver, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


195 


she visibly shuddered through her whole slight frame, ant^ 
for an instant pressed her palms hard against her eyes. 
“Ambo,” she murmured, “it was cruel — worse than any- 
thing! I got to the ’phone all right, didn’t I? Yes, I 
remember that. I gave the message. But I knew I must 
go back to her. So much blood, Ambo. . . . I’m a coward 
— oh, I’m a coward! But I tried, I did try to go back! 
Where did I go, Ambo?” 

“You went to sleep like a sensible little woman!” struck 
in Doctor Askew, briskly. “You’d done all you could, all 
anyone could — so you went to sleep. I wish to God more 
women under such circumstances would follow your 
example! Much better than going all to pieces and mak- 
ing a scene !” 

Susan could not respond to his encouraging smile. “To 
sleep!” she sighed miserably; “just as I did — once before. 
What a coward I am ! When awful things happen, I dodge 
them — I run away.” 

“Nonsense, dear. You knew Gertrude was beyond help- 
ing, didn’t you?” 

“Yes; but if she hadn’t been?” She shook her head 
impatiently. “You’re both trying to be kind; but you 
won’t be able to make me forgive myself — not this time. 
I don ’t rise to a crisis — I slump. Artemis wouldn ’t have ; 
nor Gertrude. You know that’s true, Ambo. Even if I 
could do nothing for her — there were others to think of. 
There was you. I ought to have been helping you; not 
you, me.” She put out her hand to me. “You’ve done 
everything for me, always — and I make no return. Now, 
when I might have, I — I ’ve been a quitter ! ’ ’ 

Tears of shame and self-reproach poured from her eyes. 
“Oh,” she cried out with a sort of fierce disgust, “how 
I hate a coward! How I hate myself!” 

“Come, come!” protested Doctor Askew. “This won’t 
do, little lady ! ” He laid a firm hand on her shoulder and 
almost roughly shook it, as if she had been a boy. “If 
you’re equal to it, I suggest you get up and wash your face 
in good cold water. Do your hair, too — put yourself to 


196 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


rights! Things never look quite normal to a woman, you 
know, when her hair’s tumbling!” His hand slipped from 
her shoulder to her upper arm ; he drew the coverlet from 
her, and helped her to rise. “All right? Feel your pins 
under you ? . . . Fine ! Need a maid ? No ? . . . Splen- 
did! Come along, Mr. Hunt, we’ll wait for the little lady 
in the drawing-room. She’ll soon pull herself together.” 

He joined me and walked with me to the door. Susan 
had not moved as yet from the bedside. 

“Ambo,” she demanded unexpectedly, “does Sister 
know ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, dear.” 

“Why isn’t she with me then? Is her cold worse?” 

“Rather, I’m afraid. I’ve sent a doctor to her, with 
instructions to keep her in bed if possible. We’ll go right 
down when you’re ready and feel up to it.” 

“Why didn’t I stay with her, Ambo? I should have. 
If I had, all this wouldn’t have happened. It was pure 
selfishness, my coming here to see Mrs. Arthur. I simply 
wanted the cheap satisfaction of telling her — oh, no mat- 
ter! I’ll be ready in five minutes or less.” 

“Ah,” laughed Doctor Askew, “then we know just what 
to expect! I’ll order my car round for you in half an 
hour. ’ ’ 

Phil and Jimmy arrived in town that afternoon and 
I met them at the Brevoort, where the three of us took 
rooms, with a sitting-room, for the night. I told them 
everything that had occurred as fully as I could, with one 
exception : I did not speak of those first three pages auto- 
matically scribbled by Susan’s hand. Nor did I mention 
my impression — which was rapidly becoming a fixed idea — 
that my love for her had darkened her life. This was my 
private problem, my private desolation. It would be my 
private duty to free Susan’s spirit from this intolerable 
strain. No one could help me here, not even Susan. In 
all that most mattered to me, my isolation must from now 
on be complete. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


197 


All else I told them, not omitting my vision — the whole 
wild story. And, finally, I had now to add to my devil’s 
list a new misfortune. We had found poor Miss Goueher’s 
condition much more serious than I had supposed. Doctor 
Askew had taken us down in his car, and we were met in 
the nondescript lower hall of the boarding-house by his 
friend, Doctor Carl — the doctor whom I had sent to Miss 
Goucher on his advice. Miss Goucher’s heavy chest cold, 
he at once informed us, had taken a graver turn; double 
pneumonia had declared itself. Her fever was high and 
she had lately grown delirious ; he had put a trained nurse 
in charge. The crisis of the disease would probably be 
passed during the next twelve hours ; he was doing every- 
thing possible ; he hoped for the best. 

Susan, very white, motionless, had heard him out. “If 
Sister dies,” she had said quietly when he ended, “I shall 
have killed her.” Then she had run swiftly up the stairs 
and the two doctors had followed her. I had remained 
below and had not again seen her ; but Doctor Askew had 
returned within ten minutes, shaking his head. 

“No one can say what will happen,” I had finally 
wrested from him. “One way or the other now, it’s the 
flip of a coin. Carl’s doing his best — that is, nothing, since 
there’s nothing to do. I’ve warned him to keep an eye on 
the little lady. I’ll look in again after dinner. Good-by. 
Better find a room and get some sleep if you can.” 

There was little doubt that Miss Goucher’s turn for the 
worse had come as the result of Susan’s disturbing all- 
night absence. Susan had made her comfortable and left 
her in bed, promising to be home before twelve. Miss 
Goucher had fallen asleep about eleven and had not waked 
until two. The light she had left for Susan had not been 
switched off, and Susan’s bed, which stood beside her own, 
was unoccupied. Feverish from her bronchial cold, she 
was at once greatly alarmed, and sprang from her bed to 
go into the sitting-room, half hoping to find Susan there 
and scold her a little for remaining up so late over her 


198 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


work. She did not even stop to pnt on a dressing-gown or 
find her slippers. All this Susan later learned from her 
red-eyed landlady, Miss O’Neill, whose own bedroom, as it 
happened, was just beside their own. Miss O’Neill, a 
meritorious if tiresome spinster of no particular age, had at 
last been waked from heavy and well-earned sleep by per- 
sistent knocking at her door. She had found Miss Goucher 
standing in the unheated, draughty hall, bare-footed, in 
her nightgown, her cheeks flushed with mounting fever 
while her teeth chattered with cold. 

Like a sensible woman she had hurried her instantly 
back to bed, and would have gone at once for a hot-water 
bottle, if Miss Goucher had not insisted upon a hearing. 
Miss O’Neill was abjectly fond of Miss Goucher, who had 
the rare gift of listening to voluble commonplace without 
impatience — a form of sympathy so rare and so flattering 
to Miss O’Neill’s so often bruised self-esteem that she 
would gladly — had there been any necessity — have carried 
Miss Goucher rent-free for the mere spiritual solace of 
pouring out her not very romantic troubles to her. She 
had taken, Susan felt, an almost voluptuous pleasure in 
this, her one opportunity to do something for Miss Goucher. 
She had telephoned Gertrude’s apartment for her: “no 
matter if it is late! I won’t have you upset like this for 
nobody! They’ve got to answer!” And she had talked 
with some man — “and I didn’t like his tone, neither” — 
who had asked her some rather odd questions, and had 
then told her Miss Blake was O. K., not to worry about 
Miss Blake ; she ’d had a f ainting-spell and been put to bed ; 
she’d be all right in the morning; sure; well, he was the 
doctor, he guessed he ought to know! “Queer kind of 
doctor for a lady,” Miss O’Neill had opined; “he sounded 
more like a mick ! ” A shrewd guess, for he was, no doubt, 
one of Conlon’s trusties. 

Miss Goucher had then insisted that she was going to 
dress and go up at once to Susan, and had even begun her 
preparations in spite of every protest, when she was seized 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


199 


with so stabbing a pain in her chest that she could only 
collapse groaning on the bed and let Miss 0 ’Neill minister 
to her as best she might with water bottles and a mustard 
plaster borrowed from Number Twelve. . . . 

By the time I had tardily remembered to telephone Miss 
Goucher it was almost nine a. m., and it was Miss O’Neill 
who had answered the call, receiving my assurances of 
Susan’s well-being, and informing me in turn that poor 
Miss Goucher was good and sick and no mistake, let alone 
worrying, and should she send for a doctor? She was a 
Scientist herself, though she’d tried a mustard plaster, 
anyway, always liking to be on the safe side; but Miss 
Goucher wasn’t, and so maybe she ought. At this point I 
had naturally taken charge. 

And it was at this point in my long, often interrupted 
relation to Phil and Jimmy that Phil took charge. 

“You’re going to bed, Hunt — and you’re going now! 
There ’s absolutely nothing further you can do this evening, 
and if anything turns up Jimmy or I can attend to it. 
You’ve been living on your nerves all day and you show 
it, too plainly. We don’t want another patient to-mor- 
row. Run out and get some veronal powders, Jimmy. 
Thanks. No protests, old man. You’re going to bed!” 

I went ; and, drugged with veronal, I slept — slept dream- 
lessly — for fourteen hours. When I woke, a little past ten, 
Jimmy was standing beside me. 

“Good morning, Mr. Hunt. You look rested up some! 
How about breakfast?” His greeting went through all 
the sounds and motions of cheerfulness, but it was counter- 
feit coin. There was something too obviously wrong with 
Jimmy’s ordinarily fresh healthy-boy face; it had gone 
sallow and looked pincushiony round the eyes. I stared 
at him dully, but could not recall anything that might 
account for this alteration. Only very gradually a faint 
sense of discomfort began to pervade my consciousness. 
Hadn’t something happened — once — something rather sad 
— and rather horrible? When was it? Where was I? 


200 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


And then the full gust of recollection came like a stiff 
physical blow over my heart. I sat up with a sharp gasp 
for breath. . . . 

“Well!” I demanded. “Miss Goucher! How is she?” 

“She’s dead, sir,” answered Jimmy, turning away. 

“And ” 

“She’s wonderful!” answered Jimmy. 

He had not needed Susan’s name. 

Yes, in a sense, Jimmy was right. He was not a boy to 
look far beneath the surface effects of life, and throughout 
the following weeks Susan’s surface effect was indeed won- 
derful. Apparently she stood up to her grief and mastered 
it, developing an outer stillness, a quietude strangely dis- 
quieting to Phil and to me. Gentleness itself in word and 
deed, for the first time since we had known her she became 
spiritually reticent, holding from us her deeper thoughts. 
It was as if she had secretly determined — God knows from 
what pressure of lonely sorrow — to conventionalize her life, 
to present the world hereafter nothing but an even surface 
of unobtrusive conformity. This, we feared, was hereafter 
to be her wounded soul’s protection, her Chinese Wall. It 
had not somehow the feel of a passing mood ; it had rather 
the feel of a permanent decision or renunciation. And it 
troubled our hearts. . . . 

I spare you Gertrude’s funeral, and Miss Goucher ’s. 
The latter, held in a small, depressingly official mortuary 
chapel, provided — at a price — by the undertaker, was 
attended only by Phil, Jimmy, Susan, Sonia, Miss O’Neill 
and me. Oh — there was also the Episcopal clergyman, 
whom I provided. He read the burial service profession- 
ally, but well ; it is difficult to read it badly. There are a 
few sequences of words that really are foolproof, carrying 
their own atmosphere and dignity with them. 

Phil and I, at Susan’s request, had examined Miss 
Goucher ’s effects and had made certain inquiries. She 
had been for many years, we found, entirely alone in the 
world — a phrase often, but seldom accurately, used. It is a 
rare thing, happily, to discover a human being who is 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


201 


absolutely the last member of his or her family line; in 
Miss Goucher ’s case this aloneness was complete. But so 
far as her nonexistent ancestors were concerned, Miss 
Goucher, we ascertained, had every qualification necessary 
for a D. A. R. ; forebears of hers had lived for generations 
in an old homestead near Poughkeepsie, and the original 
Ithiel Goucher had fought as a young officer under Wash- 
ington. From soldiering, the Gouchers had passed on to 
farming, to saving souls, to school-teaching, to patent- 
medicine peddling, and finally to drink and drugs and 
general desuetude. Miss Goucher herself had been a last 
flare-up of the primitive family virtues, and with her they 
were now extinct. 

All this we learned from her papers, and from an old 
lady in Poughkeepsie who remembered her grandfather, 
and so presumably her mother and father as well — though 
in reply to my letter of inquiry she forbore to mention 
them. They were mentioned several times in letters and 
legal documents preserved by Miss Goucher, but — except to 
say that they both died before she was sixteen — I shall 
follow the example of the old lady in Poughkeepsie. She, 
I feel, and the Roman poet long before her, had what 
Jimmy calls the “right idea.” . . . 

Miss Goucher, always methodical, left a brief and char- 
acteristic will : “To Susan Blake, ward of Ambrose Hunt, 
Esq., of New Haven, Conn., and to her heirs and assigns 
forever, I leave what little personal property I possess. 
She has been to me more than a daughter. I desire to be 
cremated, believing that to be the cleanest and least trouble- 
some method of disposing of the dead.” 

That, with the proper legal additions, was all. Her 
desire was of course respected, and I had a small earthen- 
ware jar containing her ashes placed in my own family 
vault. On this jar Susan had had the following words 
inscribed : 


MALVINA GOUCHER 
A GENTLE WOMAN 



202 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


vn 

On one point Susan was from the first determined: 
Miss Goucher’s death should make no difference in her 
struggle for independence; she would go on as she had 
begun, and fight things through to a finish alone. Neither 
Phil nor I could persuade her to take even a few days for 
a complete change of scene, a period of rest and recupera- 
tion. Simply, she would not. She settled down at once to 
work, harder than ever, turning out quotable paragraphs 
for Whim , as daring as they were sprightly ; and she reso- 
lutely kept her black hours of loneliness to herself. That 
she had many such hours I then suspected and now know, 
but on my frequent visits to New York — I had been 
appointed administrator of Miss Goucher’s more than mod- 
est estate — she ignored them, and skillfully turned all my 
inquiries aside. These weeks following on Miss Goucher’s 
death were for many reasons the unhappiest of my life. 

Never since I had known Susan, never until now, had 
our minds met otherwise than candidly and freely. Now, 
through no crying fault on either side — unless through a 
lack of imagination on mine — barriers were getting piled 
up between us, barriers composed of the subtlest, yet stub- 
bornest misunderstandings. Our occasional hours together 
soon became a drab tissue of evasions and cross purposes 
and suppressed desires. Only frankness can serve me here 
or make plain all that was secretly at work to deform the 
natural development of our lives. 

There are plays — we have all attended them to our 
indignation — in which some unhappy train of events seems 
to have been irrationally forced upon his puppets by the 
author; if he would only let them speak out freely and 
sensibly, all their needless difficulties would vanish ! Such 
plays infuriate the public and are never successful. 

“Good Lord!” we exclaim. “Why didn’t she say she 
loved him in the first place!” — or, “If he had only told 
her his reasons for leaving home that night ! ’ ’ 

We, the enlightened public, feel that in the shoes of 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


203 


either the hero or the heroine we must have acted more 
wisely, and we refuse our sympathy to misfortunes that 
need never have occurred. Our reaction is perhaps inevi- 
table and aesthetically justified ; but I am wondering — I am 
wondering whether two-thirds of the unhappiness of most 
mortals is not due to their failure clearly to read another’s 
thoughts or clearly to reveal their own? Is not half, at 
least, of the misery in our hearts born of futile misunder- 
standings, misunderstandings with which any sane onlooker 
in full possession of the facts on both sides, can have little 
patience, since he instinctively feels they ought never to 
have taken place? But it is only in the theater that we 
find such an onlooker, the audience, miraculously in pos- 
session of the facts on both sides. In active life, we are 
doing pretty well if we can partly understand our own 
motives ; we are supermen if we divine the concealed, 
genuine motives of another. Certainly at this period Susan, 
with all her insight, did not seize my motives, nor was I 
able to interpret hers. Hence, we could not speak out! 
What needed to be said between us could not be said. And 
the best proof that it could not is, after all, that it was 
not. . . . 

The conversation that ought to have taken place between 
us might not unreasonably have run something like this: 

Susan : Ambo dear — what is the matter ? Heaven knows 
there’s enough! — but I mean between us? You’ve never 
been more wonderful to me than these past weeks — and 
never so remote. I can feel you edging farther and farther 
away. Why, dear ? 

I: I’ve been a nuisance to you too long, Susan. What- 
ever I am from now on, I won ’t be that. 

Susan : As if you could be ; or ever had been ! 

I : Don ’t try to spare my feelings because you like me — 
because you’re grateful to me and sorry for me! I’ve had 
a glimpse of fact, you see. It’s the great moral antiseptic. 
My illusions are done for. 

Susan: What illusions? 


204 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


I: The illusion that you ever have really loved me. 
The illusion that you might some day grow to love me. The 
illusion that you might some day be my wife. 

Susan : Only the last is illusion, Ambo. I do love you. 
I’m growing more in love with you every day. But I can’t 
be your wife, ever. If I’ve seemed changed and sad — apart 
from Sister’s death, and everything else that’s happened — 
it’s that, dear. It’s killing me by half -inches to know I can 
never be completely part of your life — yours ! 

I: 

[But I can’t even imagine what babble of sorrow and 
joy such words must have wrung from me! Suppose a 
decent interval, and a partial recovery of verbal control.] 

Susan: You shouldn’t have rescued me from Birch 
Street, Ambo. Everything’s made it plain to me, at last. 
But I ’ve already ground the mud of it into your life now — 
in spite of myself. You’ll never feel really clean again. 

I : What nonsense ! Susan, Susan — dearest ! 

Susan: It isn’t nonsense. You forget; I’m a specialist 
in nonsense nowadays. Oh, Ambo, how can you care for 
me! I’ve been so insufferably self-satisfied; so childishly 
blind! My eyes are wide open now. I’ve had the whole 
story of what happened that awful night — all of it — from 
Doctor Askew. He thought he was psycho-analyzing me, 
while I pumped it out of him, drop by drop. And I’ve 
been to Maltby, too ; yes, I ’ve been to Maltby, behind your 
back. Ambo, he isn’t really certain yet that I didn’t go 
crazy that night and kill your wife. Neither, I’m sure, is 
Mrs. Arthur. They’ve given me the benefit of the doubt 
simply because they dread being dragged through a hor- 
rible scandal, that’s all. But they’re not convinced. Of 
course, Maltby didn’t say so in so many words, but it was 
plain as plain! He was afraid of me — afraid! I could 
feel his fear. He thinks madness is in my blood. Well, 
he’s right. Not just as he means it, but as Setebos means 
it — the cruel, jealous God of this world! . . . No, wait, 
dear ! Let me say it out to you, once for all. My father 
ended a brutal life by an insanely brutal murder, then 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


205 


killed himself; my own father. And I’ve never all these 
years honestly realized that as part of my life — part of me! 
But now I do. It’s there, back of me. I can never escape 
from it. Oh, how could I have imagined myself like others 
— a woman like others, free to love and marry and have 
children and a home! How could I! 

I : Susan ! Is that all ? Is it really all that ’s holding 
you from me? Good God, dear! Why, I thought you— 
secretly — perhaps even unknown to yourself — loved 
Jimmy! 

Susan: Jimmy? You thought 

I : I think so even now. How can I help it ? Look. . . . 
[And here you must suppose me to show her those first 
scrawled sheets, written automatically by her hand.] Per- 
haps I ’m revealing your own heart to you, Susan — dragging 
to light what you’ve tried to keep hidden even from your- 
self. See, dear. “A net. No means of escape from it. 
To escape — somehow. Jimmy ” 

[And then Susan would perhaps have handed back those 
scrawled pages to me with a pitying and pitiful smile.] 

Susan : 

[Author’s Note: This carefully written, imaginary 
speech has been deleted in^toto by Censor Susan from the 
page proof — at considerable expense to me — and the fol- 
lowing authentic confession substituted for it in her own 
hand. But she doesn ’t know I am making this explanation, 
which will account to you for the form and manner of her 
confession, purposely designed to be a continuation of my 
own imaginary flight. In admitting this, I am risking 
Susan’s displeasure; but conscience forbids me to let you 
mistake a 4 ‘genuine human document” — so dear to the 
modern heart — for a mere effort at interpretation by an 
amateur psychologist. What follows, then, is veracious, is 
essentially that solemn thing so dear to a truth-loving 
generation — sheer fact.] 

Ambo dear, I can explain that, but not without a long, 
unhappy confession. Must I? It’s a shadowy, inside-of- 
me story, awfully mixed and muddled; not a nice story 


206 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


at all. Won’t it be better, all round, if I simply say again 
that I love you , not Jimmy, with all my heart ? 

[No doubt I should then have reached for her hands, 
and she would have drawn away.] 

Ah, no, dear, please not ! I ’ve never made a clean breast 
of it all, even to myself. It’s got to be done, though, Ambo, 
sooner or later, for both our sakes. Be patient with me. 
I’ll begin at the beginning. 

I’m ridiculously young, Ambo; we all keep forgetting 
how young I am ! I ’m an infant prodigy, really ; you and 
Phil — and God first, I suppose — have made me so. And 
the main point about infant prodigies is that experience 
hasn’t caught up with them. They live in things they’ve 
imagined from things they’ve been told or read, live on 
intuition and second-hand ideas; and they’ve no means of 
testing their real values in a real world. And they’re child- 
ishly conceited, Ambo ! I am. Less now than some months 
ago; but I’m still pretty bad. . . . 

Well, back in Birch Street, before I came to you, when 
I was honestly a child, I lived all alone inside of myself. 
I lived chiefly on stories I made up about myself; and of 
course my stories were all escapes from reality — from the 
things that hurt or disgusted me most. There was hardly 
anything in my life at home that I didn’t long to escape 
from. You can understand that, in a general way. But 
there’s one thing you perhaps haven’t thought about; it’s 
such an ugly thing to think about. I know it isn ’t modern 
of me, but I do hate to talk about it, even to you. I must, 
though. You’ll never understand — oh, lots of later things 
— unless I do. 

Love, Ambo, human love, as I learned of it there at 
home — and I saw and heard much too much of it — fright- 
ened and sickened me. It was swinish — horrible. Most of 
all I longed to escape from all that ! I couldn ’t. I wonder 
if anyone ever has or can? We are made as we are made. 

. . . Yes, I longed to escape from it ; but my very made-up 
story of escape was a disguised romance. Jimmy was to be 
the gentle Galahad who would some day rescue me. He 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


207 


had done battle for me once already — with Joe Gonfarone. 
But some day he would come in white, shining armor and 
take me far away from all the mud and sweat of Birch 
Street to blue distant hills. Artemis was all mixed up in 
it, too; she was to be our special goddess; our free, swift, 
cool-eyed protector. There was to be no heartsick shame, 
no stuffiness in my life any more forever! But it wasn’t 
Jimmy who rescued me, Ambo. You did. 

Only, when we’ve lived in a dream, wholly, for months 
and months and months, it doesn ’t vanish, Ambo ; it never 
vanishes altogether; it’s part of us — part of our lives. 
Isn’t it? Gertrude was once your dream, dear; and the 
dream-Gertrude has never really vanished from your life, 
and never will. Ah, don’t I know! 

Well, then you rescued me ; and you and Phil and Maltby 
and Sister and books and Hillhouse Avenue and France 
and Italy and England, and my Magic Circle — everything 
— crowded upon me and changed me and made me what 
I am ; if I ’m anything at all ! But Birch Street had made 
me first ; and my dreams. . . . 

Ambo, I can never make you know what you’ve been 
to me, never ! Cinderella ’s prince was nothing beside you, 
and my Galahad-Jimmy a pale phantom! I shan’t try. 
And I can never make you know what a wild confusion 
of storm you sent whirling through me when I first felt the 
difference in you — felt your man’s need of me, of me, body 
and soul! You meant me not to feel that, Ambo; but I 
did. I was only seventeen. And my first reaction was all 
passionate joy, a turbulent desire to give, give, give — and 
damn the consequences ! It was, Ambo. I loved you. 

But given you and me, Ambo, that couldn’t last long. 
You’re too moral — and I’m too complicated. My inner pat- 
tern’s a labyrinth, full of queer magic; simple emotions 
soon get lost in me, lost and transformed. And please don ’t 
keep forgetting how young I was, and still am ; how little 
I could understand of all I was conceited enough to think 
I understood! Well, dear, I saw you struggling to sup- 
press your love for me as something wrong, unworthy; 


208 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


something that could only harm us both. And then all that 
first, swift, instinctive joy went out of me, and my old 
fear and distrust of what men call love seized me again. 
“Stuffiness, stuffiness everywhere — it leads to nothing but 
stuffiness !” I said. “I hate it. I won ’t let it rule my life. 
The great thing is to keep clear of it, clean of it, aloof 
and free!” The old Artemis-motive swept through me 
again like a hill- wind — but it came in gusts; and there 
were days — weeks, Ambo — when I simply wanted to be 
yours. And one night I threw myself into your arms. . . . 

But the next day I was afraid again. The phrase “pas- 
sion’s slave” got into my head and plagued me. Then you 
came to me and said, “It’s the end of the road, dear. We 
can’t go on.” That changed everything once more, Ambo, 
in a flash. That was my crisis. From that moment, I was 
madly jealous of Gertrude ; knew I always had been, from 
the first. My telegram to her was a challenge to battle. 
It was, dear — and I lost. She came back; she was won- 
derful, too — her way — and the old Gertrude-dream stirred 
in you again; just stirred, but that was enough. You said 
to yourself, didn’t you? that perhaps after all the best so- 
lution for our wretched difficulties was for Gertrude to re- 
turn to her home. At least, that would end things. But 
you couldn’t have said that to yourself if Gertrude had 
been really repulsive to you. The old dream had fluttered 
its tired wings, once, Ambo; you know it had! 

And so I flopped again, dear ! I was sick of love ; I hated 
love ! I said to myself, 1 ‘ 1 won ’t have this stupid, brutal, 
instinctive thing pushing and pulling me about like this! 
I’ll rule my own life, thanks — my own thoughts and 
dreams! Freedom’s the thing — the only good thing in life. 
I’ll be free! Ambo, too, must learn to be free. We can 
only share what’s honestly best in both of us when at last 
we are free ! ’ ’ 

My Galahad-Jimmy had turned up again, too. Perhaps 
that had something to do with my final fiercest revolt 
against you. I don’t know. He was all I had wanted him 
to be, Ambo; simple and straightforward and clean. Oh, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


209 


he had his white, shining armor on, bless him! But I 
didn ’t want him to rescue me, for all that ; not in the old 
way. I was just glad my dream-boy had come a little 
true; that’s all. You were jealous of him, weren’t you? 
Confess ! You needn’t have been. 

But here in # New York, with Sister, things happened 
that made a difference. . . . 

First of all, dear, I discovered all I had lost in losing 
you; discovered I couldn’t be free. All I could do was to 
make some kind of a life of it; for Sister, chiefly. And I 
tried ; oh, I did try ! Then those whispered scandals about 
us began. But it wasn ’t the scandal itself that did for me ; 
it was something added to it — by Mrs. Arthur, I suppose — 
something true, Ambo, that I T d never honestly faced. Sud- 
denly my father rose from the dead! Suddenly I was 
forced to feel that never, never under any conditions, would 
it have been possible for me to be yours — bear you chil- 
dren. . . . Suddenly I felt, saw — as I should have seen long 
ago — that the strain of evil, perhaps of madness, in my 
father — the strain that made his life a hell of black pas- 
sions — must end with me ! 

Here/s where Jimmy comes back, Ambo — and it’s the 
worst of all I have to confess. My anxiety was all for you 
now: not for myself. I happened to love you that way. 
“ Suppose,” I kept thinking, “ suppose something should 
unexpectedly make it possible for Ambo to ask me to be 
his wife? Suppose Gertrude should fall in love herself 
and insist on divorce ? Or suppose she should die ? Ambo 
would be certain to come to me. And if he did? Should 
I have the moral courage to send him away? As I must 
— I must!” 

Dear, from that time on a sort of demon in me kept 
suggesting: “Jimmy — Jimmy’s the solution! He’s almost 
in love with you now ; all he needs is a little encouragement. 
You could manage it, Susan. You could engage yourself 
to Jimmy; and then you could string him along! You 
could make it an interminable engagement, years and 
years of it, and break it off when Ambo was thoroughly 


210 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


discouraged or cured; you’re clever enough for that. And 
Jimmy’s ingenuousness itself. You could manage Jimmy.” 
Oh, please don’t think I ever really listened to my demon, 
was ever tempted by him! But I hated myself for the 
mere fact that such thoughts could even occur to me! 
They did, though, more than once ; and each time I had to 
banish them, thrust them down into their native darkness. 

But they didn ’t die there, Ambo ; they lived there, a hide- 
ous secret life, lying in wait to betray me. They never 
will betray me, of course ; I loathe them. But they can still 
stir in their darkness, make themselves known. That’s 
what the references to Jimmy mean, Ambo, in those pages 
I scribbled in my trance; and that’s all they mean. For 
I don ’t love him ; I love you. 

But I can’t marry you, ever. I can’t. That black 
strain concentrated in my father — oh, it must die out with 
me! Just as Sister’s line ended with her. . . . She ran 
away from the one love of her life, Ambo — just as I must 
run away from you. You never knew that about Sister. 
But I knew it. Sonia told me. Sister told her, the week 
before Sonia married. Sister felt then that Sonia ought to 
run away from all that, as she had. But Sonia wouldn’t 
listen to her. . . . 

1 c Good for Sonia ! ” I might then have cried out. 4 1 God 
bless her! Hasn’t she made her husband happy? Aren’t 
her children his pride? Why in heaven’s name should 
she have denied herself the right to live ! And for a mere 
possibility of evil ! As if the blood of any human family on 
earth were wholly sound, wholly blameless! Sonia was 
selfish, but right, dear; and Miss Goucher was brave, but 
wrong! So are you wrong! Actually inherited feeble- 
mindedness, or insanity, or disease — that’s one thing; but 
a dread of mere future possibilities, of mere supposed ten- 
dencies! Good Lord! The human race might as well 
commit suicide en bloc! It’s you I love — you — just as you 
are. And you say you love me. Well, that settles it!” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


211 


But who knows? It might have settled it and it might 
not — could any such imaginary conversation conceivably 
have taken place. It did not take place. We are deal- 
ing, worse luck, with history. 

vin 

Perhaps six weeks after Miss Goucher’s death one little 
conversation, just skirting these hidden matters, did take 
place between us ; but how different was its atmosphere, and 
how drearily different its conclusion! You will under- 
stand it better now that — like a theater audience, or like 
God — you are in full possession of Susan’s facts and of 
mine; but I fear it will interest you less. To know all 
may sometimes be to forgive all; but more often, alas, it 
is to be bored by everything. . . . 

[Firmly inserted note, by Susan: “ Rubbish! It’s only 
when we think we know it all, and don’t really, that we 
are bored.”] 

I had taken Susan for dinner that night to a quiet hotel 
uptown where I knew the dining-room, mercifully lacking 
an orchestra and a cabaret, was not well patronized, though 
the cooking was exceptionally good. At this hotel, by a 
proper manipulation of the head waiter, it is often possible 
to get a table a little apart from the other diners — an ad- 
vantage, if one desires to talk intimately without the an- 
noyance of being overheard. It troubled me to find Susan’s 
appetite practically nonexistent; I had ordered one or 
two special dishes to tempt her, but I saw that she took 
no pleasure in them, merely forcing herself to eat so as 
not to disquiet me. She was looking badly, too, all gleam- 
less shadow, and fighting off a physical and mental languor 
by a stubborn effort which she might have concealed from 
another, but not from me. It was only too plain to me that 
her wish was to keep the conversation safely away from 
whatever Was busying and saddening her private thoughts. 
In this, till the coffee was placed before us, I thought best 


212 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


to humor her, and we had discussed at great length the 
proper format for her first book of poems, which was to 
appear within the next month. Also, we had discussed 
Heywood Sampson’s now rapidly maturing plans for his 
new critical review. 

“He really wants me on his staff, Ambo, and I really 
want to be on it — just for the pleasure of working with 
him. It’s an absolutely unbelievable chance for me! And 
yet ” 

“And yet ? Is there any reason why you shouldn’t 

accept?” 

“At least two reasons, yes. I’m afraid both of them will 
surprise you.” 

‘ 1 1 wonder. ’ ’ 

“Won’t they? If not, Ambo, you must suppose you’ve 
guessed them. What are they?” 

Susan rather had me here. I had not guessed them, but 
wasn’t willing to admit even to myself that I could not if 
I tried. I puckered my brows, judicially. 

“Well,” I hesitated, “you may very naturally feel that 
‘Dax’ is too plump a bird in the hand to be sacrificed 
for Heywood ’s slim bluebird in the bush. Any new publi- 
cation’s a gamble, of course. On the other hand, Heywood 
isn’t the kind to leave his associates high and dry. Even 
if the review should fail, he’ll stand by you somehow. He 
has a comfy fortune, you know; he could carry on the re- 
view as a personal hobby if he cares to, even if it never 
cleared a penny.” 

Susan smiled, gravely shaking her head: “Cold, dear; 
stone cold. I’m pretty mercenary these days, but I’m not 
quite so mercenary as that. Now that I’ve discovered I 
can make a living, I ’m not nearly so interested in it ; hardly 
at all. It’s the stupid side of life, always; I shouldn’t 
like it to make much difference to me now, when it comes 
to real decisions. I did want a nice home for Sister, though. 
As for me, any old room most anywhere will do. It will, 
Ambo; don’t laugh; I’m in earnest. But what’s your 
second guess?” she added quickly. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 213 

“You’ve some writing you want to do — a book, maybe? 
You’re afraid the review will interfere?” 

“Ah, now you’re a tiny bit warmer ! I am afraid it will 
interfere, but in a much deeper way than that; inter- 
fere with me.” 

4 ‘ 1 don ’t quite follow that, do I ! ” 

“Good gracious, no — since you ask. It’s simple enough, 
though — and pretty vague. Only it feels important — 
here.” For an instant her hand just touched her breast. 
“I hate so to be roped in, Ambo, have things staked out 
for me — spiritually, I mean. Mr. Sampson’s a darling; I 
love him! But he’s a great believer in ropes and stakes 
and fences — even barbed wire. I’m beginning to see that 
the whole idea of his review is a scheme for mending politi- 
cal and moral and social fences, stopping up gaps in them 
made by irresponsible idealists — anarchists, revolutionary 
socialists — people like that. People like me, really ! — 
There! Now you do look surprised.” 

I was ; but I smiled. 

“You’ve turned Bed, Susan? How long since? Over- 
night ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Not red, ’ ’ answered Susan, with bravely forced gayety ; 
“pinkish, say! I haven’t fixed on my special shade till 
I’m sure it becomes me.” 

“It’s certain to do that, dear.” 

She bobbed me a little bow across the cloth, much in the 
old happy style — alas, not quite. “But I never did like 
washed-out colors, ’ ’ she threw in for good measure. 

“You are irresponsible, then! Suppose Phil could hear 
you — or Jimmy. Jimmy ’d say your Greenwich Village 
friends were corrupting you. Perhaps they are ? ” 

“Perhaps they are,” echoed Susan, “but I think not. 
I’m afraid it goes farther back, Ambo. It’s left-over 
Birch Street; that’s what it is. So much of me’s that. 
All of me, I sometimes believe. ’ ’ 

“Not quite. You’ll never escape Hillhouse, either, 
Susan. You’ve had both.” 


214 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


‘'Yes, I’ve had both,” she echoed again, almoit on a 
sigh, pushing her untasted demi-tasse from her. 

Suddenly her elbows were planted on the cloth before 
her, her face — shadowed and too finely drawn — dropped 
between her hands, her eyes sought and held mine. They 
dizzied me, her eyes. . . . 

“Ambo,” she said earnestly, “I suppose I’m a dreadful 
egotist, but more and more I’m feeling the real me isn’t 
a true child of this world ! I love this world — and I hate 
it. I don’t know whether I love it most or hate it most. 
I bless it and damn it every day of my life — in the same 
breath often. But sometimes I feel I hate it most — hate it 
for its cold dullness of head and heart! Why can’t we 
care more to make it worth living in, this beautiful, fright- 
ful world! What’s the matter with us? Why are we 
what we are ? Half angels — and half pigs or goats or saber- 
toothed tigers or snakes! Each and every one of us, by 
and large ! And oh, how we do distrust our three-quarters 
angels — while they’re living, anyway! Dreamers — mad 
visionaries — social rebels — outcasts ! Crucify them, crucify 
them ! Time enough to worship them — ages of to-be-wasted 
time enough — when they ’re dead ! ’ ’ She paused, still hold- 
ing my eyes, and drawing in a slow breath, a breath that 
caught midway and was almost a sob; then her eyes left 
mine. 

“There — that’s over. Saying things like that doesn’t 
help us a bit; it’s — silly. . . . And half the idealists are 
mad, no doubt, and have plenty of pig and snake in them, 
too. I’ve simply coils and coils of unregenerate serpent 
in me — and worse. Oh, Ambo dear — but I’ve a dream in 
me beyond all that, and a great longing to help it come 
true! But it doesn’t — it won’t. I’m afraid it never will 
— here. Will it there, Ambo? Is there a there f . . . Have 
we got all of Sister that clean fire couldn’t take, shut up in 
that tiny vase?” 

“We can hope not, at least,” I replied. 

“Hope isn’t enough,” said Susan. “Why don’t you 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 215 

say you know we haven’t! I know we haven’t. I do 
know it. It’s the only thing I — know!” 

A nervous waiter sidled up to us and softly slipped a 
small metal tray before me; it held my bill, carefully 
turned face downward. 

“ Anything more, sir?” he murmured. 

“A liqueur?” I suggested to Susan. She sat upright 
in her chair again, with a slight impatient shake of the 
head. 

I ordered a cigar and a fine champagne. The waiter, 
still nervously fearful of having approached us at a mo- 
ment when he suspected some intimate question of the heart 
had grown critically tense, faded from us with the slight- 
est, discreetest cough of reassurance. He was not one, he 
would have us know, to obtrude material considerations 
when they were out of place. 

“No; I can’t go with Mr. Sampson,” Susan was saying; 
“and he’ll be hurt — he won’t be able to see why. But 
I’m not made to be an editor — of anything. Editors have 
to weigh other people ’s words. I can ’t even weigh my own. 
And I talk of nothing but myself. Ugh ! ’ ’ 

“You’re tired out, overwrought,” t stupidly began. 

“Don’t tell me so!” cried Susan. “If I should believe 
you, I’d be lost.” 

“But,” I blundered on, “it’s only common sense to let 
down a little, at such a time. If you’d only take a real 
rest ” 

“There is no such thing,” said Susan. “We just strug- 
gle on and on. It’s rather awful, isn’t it?” And pres- 
ently, very quietly, as if to herself, she said over those 
words, surely among the saddest and loveliest ever writ- 
ten by mortal man : 

From too much love of living, 

From hope and fear set free, 

We thank with brief thanksgiving 
Whatever gods may be 


216 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


That no life lives forever, 

That dead men rise up never ; 

That even the weariest river 
Winds somewhere safe to sea. 

1 1 To sea, ’ ’ she repeated ; 4 ‘ to sea. ... As if the sea itself 
knew rest! — Now please pay yonr big fat bill from your 
nice fat pocketbook, Ambo; and take me home.” 

“If I only could!” was my despairing thought; and I 
astounded the coat-room boy, as I tipped him, by mutter- 
ing aloud, “Oh, damn Jimmy Kane!” 

“Yes, sir — thank you, sir — I will, sir,” grinned the 
coat-room boy. 

On our way downtown in the taxi Susan withdrew until 
we reached her West Tenth Street door. “Good-night, 
Ambo,” she then said; “don’t come with me; and thank 
you for everything — always. ’ ’ I crossed the pavement with 
her to the loutish brownstone front-stoop of the boarding 
house; there she turned to dismiss me. 

“You didn’t ask my second reason for not going on the 
review, Ambo. You must know it though, sooner or later. 
I can’t write any more — not well, I mean. Even my Dax 
paragraphs are falling off ; Hadow Bury mentioned it yes- 
terday. But nothing comes. I’m sterile, Ambo. I’m writ- 
ten out at twenty. Bless you. Good-night.” 

“Susan,” I cried, “come back here at once!” But she 
just turned in the doorway to smile back at me, waved her 
hand, and was gone. 

I was of two minds whether to follow her or stay. Then, 
“A whim,” I thought; “the whim of a tired child. And 
I’ve often felt that way myself — all writers do. But she 
must take a vacation of some kind — she must!” 

She did. 


IX 

I woke up the next morning, broad awake before seven 
o’clock, a full hour earlier than my habit. I woke to find 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


217 


myself greatly troubled by Susan’s parting words of the 
night before, and lay in bed for perhaps twenty minutes 
turning them over fretfully in my mind. Then I could 
stand it no longer and rose, bathed, dressed and ate my 
breakfast in self-exasperating haste, yet with no very clear 
idea of why I was hurrying or what was to follow. I 
had an appointment with my lawyer for eleven ; I was to 
lunch with Heywood Sampson at one ; after lunch — my im- 
mediate business in town being completed — I had purposed 
to return to New Haven. 

Susan would be expecting me for my daily morning call 
at half-past nine. That call was a fixed custom between us 
when I was stopping in New York. It seldom lasted over 
twenty minutes and was really just an opportunity to say 
good-morning and arrange conveniently for any further 
plans for the day or evening. But it was now only a few 
minutes past eight. No matter, Susan was both a night- 
hawk and a lark, retiring always too late and rising too 
early — though it must be said she seemed to need little 
sleep ; and I felt that I must see her at once and try some- 
how to encourage her about her work and bring her back 
to a more reasonable and normal point of view. “Over- 
strain,” I kept mumbling to myself, idiotically enough, 
as I charged rather than walked down Fifth Avenue from 
my hotel: “Overstrain — overstrain. ...” 

However, the brisk physical exertion of my walk gradu- 
ally quieted my nerves, and as I turned west on Tenth 
Street I was beginning to feel a little ashamed of my un- 
reasonable anxiety, was even beginning to poke a little fun 
at myself and preparing to amuse Susan if I could by 
a whimsical account of my morning brainstorm. I had now 
persuaded myself that I should find her quietly at work, 
as I so usually did, and quite prepared to talk things over 
more calmly. I meant this time to make a supreme effort, 
and really hoped to persuade her to do two sensible things : 
First, to accept Heywood Sampson’s offer; second, to give 
up all other work for the present, and get a complete rest 


218 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and change of scene until her services were needed for 
the review. That would not be for six or eight weeks at 
the very least. 

And I at last had a plan for her. You may or may not 
remember that Ashton Parker was a famous man thirty 
years ago ; they called him “Hyena Parker” in Wall Street, 
and no doubt he deserved it ; yet he faded gently out with 
consumption like any spring poet, having turned theoso- 
phist toward the end and made his peace with the Cosmic 
Urge. Mrs. Ashton Parker is an aunt of mine, long a 
widow, and a most delightful, easy-going, wide-awake, 
and sympathetic old lady, who has made her home in Santa 
Barbara ever since her husband’s death there. Her Span- 
ish villa and gardens are famous, and her always kindly 
eccentricities scarcely less famous than they. I could im- 
agine no one more certain to captivate Susan or to be in- 
stantly captivated by her ; and though I had not seen Aunt 
Belle for more than ten years, I knew I could count 
on her in advance to fall in with my plan. Her hos- 
pitality is notorious and would long since -have beggared 
anyone with an income less absurd. Susan should go there 
at once, for a month at least; the whole thing could be 
arranged by telegraph. Why in heaven’s name hadn’t I 
thought of and insisted upon this plan before! 

Miss O’Neill, in person, opened the front door for me. 

“Oh, Mr. Hunt!” she wailed. “Thanks to goodness 
you’re here early. I can’t do nothing with Togo. He 
won’t eat no breakfast, and he won’t let nobody touch him. 
He’s sitting up there like a — I don’t know what, with 
his precious tail uncurled and his head sort of hanging 
down — it’ll break your heart to look at him! I can’t bear 
to myself, though I’d never no use for the beast, neither 
liking nor disliking! He’s above his station, I say. But 

what with all And I’ve got to get that room cleared 

and redone by twelve, feelings or no feelings, and Gawd 
knows feelings will enter in! Not half Miss Susan’s class 
either, the new party just now applied, and right beside 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 219 

my owu room, too, though well recommended, so I can’t 
complain !” 

I broke through her dusty web of words with an im- 
patient ‘‘Wliat on earth are you talking about, Miss 
O’Neill?” 

“You don’t know?” she gasped. “You don’t ” 

“I most certainly do not. Where’s Miss Susan?” 

“Oh, Mr. Hunt ! If I’d-a knowed she hadn’t even spoke 
to you! And you with her all evening — treating to din- 
ner and all! But thank Gawd it’s a reel lady she went 
away with! Miss Leslie, in her big limousine, that’s often 
been here! That I can swear to you with my own eyes!” 

Susan was gone, and gone beyond hope of an immediate 
return. There is no need to labor the details of her flight. 
A letter, left for me with Miss 0 ’Neill, gives all the surface 
facts essential. 


“Dear Arribo: Try not to be angry with me; or too hurt. 
When I left you last night I decided to seize an oppor- 
tunity which had to be seized instantly, or not at all. Mona 
Leslie has been planning for a long European sojourn all 
winter, and for the past two weeks has been trying to per- 
suade me to go with her as a sort of overpaid companion 
and private secretary. She has dangled a salary before me 
out of all proportion to my possible value to her, but — 
never feeling very sympathetic toward her sudden whims 
and moods — that hasn’t tempted me. 

“Now, at the eleventh hour, literally, this chance for 
a complete break with my whole past and probable fu- 
ture has tempted me, and I’ve flopped. You’ve been 
urging my need for rest and change; if that’s what I do 
need this will supply it, the change at least — with no sacri- 
fice of my hard-fought-for financial independence. It was 
the abysmal prospect, as I came in, of having to go straight 
to my room — with no Sister waiting for me — and beat my 
poor typewriter and poorer brains for some sparks of wit 


220 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


• — when I knew in advance there wasn’t a spark left in me 
— that sent me to the telephone. 

“Now I’m packed — in half an hour — and waiting for 
Mona. The boat sails about three a.m. ; I don’t even know 
her name : we’ll be on her by midnight. Poor Miss O’Neill 
is flabbergasted — and so I’m afraid will you be, and Phil 
and Jimmy. I know it isn’t kind of me simply to vanish 
like this; but try to feel that I don’t mean to be unkind. 
Not even to Togo, though my treachery to him is villain- 
ous. It will be a black mark against me in Peter’s book 
forever. But I can’t take him, Ambo ; I just can’t. Please, 
please — will you? You see, dear, I can’t help being a 
nuisance to you always, after all. And I can’t even prom- 
ise you Togo will learn to love you, any more than Tumps 
— though I hope he may. He’ll grieve himself thin at 
first. He knows something’s in the air and he’s grieving 

beside me now. His eyes If Mona doesn’t come soon, 

I may collapse at his paws and promise him to stay. 

“Mona talks of a year over there, from darkest Russia 
to lightest France ; possibly two. Her plans are character- 
istically indefinite. She knows heaps of people all over, 
of course. I’ll write often. Please tell Hadow and Mr. 
Sampson I’m a physical wreck — or mental, if it sounds 
more convincing. I’m neither; but I’m tired — tired — 
tired. 

“If you can possibly help Phil and Jimmy to under- 
stand — 

“Here’s Mona now. Good-by, dear. 

“Your ashamed, utterly grateful 

“Susan. 

“P. S. I’m wearing your furs.” 


:THE SIXTH CHAPTER 


i 

S O Togd and I went home. My misery craving com- 
pany, I rode with him all the way up in the baggage- 
car, on the self-deceptive theory that he needed an ever- 
present friend. It is true, however, that he did; and it 
gratified me and a little cheered me that he seemed really 
to appreciate my attentions. I sat on a trunk, lighting 
each cigarette from the end of the last, and he sat at my 
feet, leaned wearily against the calf of my right leg and 
permitted me to fondle his ears. . . . 

ii 

‘ 4 Spring, the sweet spring !” Then birds do sing, hey- 
ding-a-ding — and so on. . . . Sweet lovers love the spring. 

. . . Jimmy, Phil and I saw little of each other those days. 
Jimmy clouded his sunny brow and started in working 
overtime. Phil plunged headlong into what was to have 
proved his philosophical magnum opus — “The Pluralistic 
Fallacy ; a Critical Study of Pragmatism. ’ ’ I also plunged 
headlong into a series of interpretative essays for Heywood 
Sampson’s forthcoming review. My first essay was to be 
on Tolstoy ; my second, on Nietzsche ; my third, on Anatole 
France ; my fourth, on Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw ; 
my fifth, on Thomas Hardy; and my sixth and last, on 
Walt Whitman. From the works of these writers it was 
my purpose to illustrate and clarify for the semicultured 
the more significant intellectual and spiritual tendencies 
of our enlightened and humane civilization. It is charac- 
teristic that I supposed myself well equipped for this task. 

221 


222 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


But I never got beyond my detached, urbane appreciation 
of Nietzsche; just as I had concluded it — our enlightened 
and humane civilization suddenly blew to atoms with a 
cliche'-sh.8ittermg report and a vile stench as of too-long- 
imprisoned gas. . . . 

m 

During those first months of Susan’s absence, which for 
more than four years were to prove the last months of 
almost world-wide and wholly world-deceptive peace, sev- 
eral things occurred of more or less importance to the pres- 
ent history. They marked, for one thing, the auspicious 
sprouting and rapid initial growth of Susan’s literary 
reputation. Her poems appeared little more than a month 
after she had left us, a well-printed volume of less than 
a hundred pages, in a sober green cover. I had taken a 
lonely sort of joy in reading and rereading the proof ; and 
if even a split letter escaped me, it has not yet been brought 
to my attention. These poems were issued under a quiet 
title and an unobtrusive pen-name, slipping into the 
market-place without any preliminary puffing, and I feared 
they were of too fine a texture to attract the notice that I 
felt they deserved. But in some respects, at least, Susan 
was born under a lucky star. An unforeseen combination 
of events suddenly focused public attention — just long 
enough to send it into a third edition — upon this incon- 
spicuous little book. 

Concurrently with its publication, The Puppet Booth 
opened its doors — its door, rather — on Macdougal Street; 
an artistic venture quite as marked, you would say, for 
early oblivion as Susan’s own. The cocoon of The Puppet 
Booth was a small stable where a few Italian venders of 
fruit and vegetables had kept their scarecrow horses and 
shabby carts and handcarts. From this drab cocoon issued 
a mailed and militant dragon-fly; vivid, flashing, erratic; 
both ugly and beautiful — and wholly alive! For there 
were in Greenwich Village — as there are, it would seem, 
in all lesser villages, from Florida to Oregon — certain 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


223 


mourners over and enthusiasts for the art called Drama, 
which they believed to be virtually extinct. Shows, it is 
true, hundreds of them, were each season produced on 
Broadway, and some of these delighted hosts of the afflu- 
ent, sentimental, and child-like American bourgeoisie. For- 
tunate managers, playsmiths and actors, endowed with 
sympathy for the crude tastes of this bourgeoisie , a sym- 
pathy partly instinctive and partly developed by commer- 
cial acumen, waxed fat with a prosperity for which the 
Village could not wearily enough express its contempt. 

None of these creatures, said the Village — no, not one — 
was a genuine artist ! The Theater, they affirmed, had been 
raped by the Philistines and prostituted to sophomoric 
merrymakers by cynical greed. The Theater! Why, it 
should be a temple, inviolably dedicated to its peculiar 
god. Since the death of religion, it was perhaps the one 
temple worthy of pious preservation. Only in a Theater, 
sincerely consecrated to the great god, Art, could the en- 
lightened, the sophisticated, the free — unite to worship. 
There only, they implied, could something adumbrating a 
sacred ritual and a spiritual consolation be preserved. 

Luckily for Susan, and indeed for us all — for we have 
all been gainers from the spontaneous generation of “little 
theaters” all over America, a phenomenon at its height just 
previous to the war — one village enthusiast, Isidore Stalin- 
ski — by vocation an accompanist, by avocation a vorticist, 
by race and nature a publicist — had succeeded in mildly 
infecting Mona Leslie — who took everything in the air, 
though nothing severely — with offhand zeal for his cause. 
The importance of her rather casual conversion lay in 
the fact that her purse strings were perpetually untied. 
Stalinski well knew that you cannot run even a tiny tem- 
ple for a handful of worshippers without vain oblations 
on the side to the false gods of this world, and these 
imply — oh, Art’s desire! — a donor. And of all possible 
varieties of donor, that most to be desired is the absentee 
donor — the donor who donates as God sends rain, unseen. 

At precisely the right moment Stalinski whispered to 


224 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Mona Leslie that entre them — though he didn’t care to be 
quoted — he preferred her interpretation of Faure’s Clair 

de Lune to that of , the particular ctiva he had just 

been accompanying through a long, rapturously advertised 
concert tour ; and Mona Leslie, about to be off on her Euro- 
pean flight, became the absentee donor to The Puppet 
Booth. 

The small stable was leased and cleansed and sufficiently 
reshaped to live up to its anxiously chosen name. Much 
of the reshaping and all of the decorating was done, after 
business hours, by the clever and pious hands of the vil- 
lagers. Then four one-act plays were selected from among 
some hundreds poured forth by village genius to its re- 
habilitated god. The clever and pious hands flew faster 
than ever, busying themselves with scenery and costumes 
and properties and color and lighting — all blended toward 
the creation of a thoroughly uncommercial atmosphere. 
And the four plays were staged, directed, acted, and finally 
attended by the Village. It was a perfectly lovely party 
and the pleasantest of times was had by all. 

And it only remains to drop this tone of patronizing 
persiflage and admit, with humblest honesty, that the first 
night at The Puppet Booth was that very rare thing, a com- 
plete success ; what Broadway calls a * ‘ knockout. ’ ’ Within 
a fortnight seats for The Puppet Booth were at a ruinous 
premium in all the ticket agencies on or near Times Square. 

I happened to be there on that ecstatic opening night. 
Susan, in her first letter, from Liverpool, had enjoined me 
to attend and report; Mona would be glad to learn from 
an unprejudiced outsider how the affair went off. But 
Susan did not mention the fact that one of the four se- 
lected plays had been written by herself. 

Jimmy was with me. Phil, who saw more of him than 
I did, thought he was going stale from overwork, so I 
had made a point of hunting him up and dragging him off 
with me for a night in town. He hadn’t wanted to go; 
said frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. I’m convinced it 
was the first time he had ever used the word “mood” in 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 225 

connection with himself or anybody else. Jimmy and 
moods of any kind simply didn’t belong together. 

We had a good man’s dinner at a good man’s chop- 
house that night, and, once I got Jimmy to work on it, 
his normal appetite revived and he engulfed oysters and 
steak and a deep-dish apple pie and a mug or so of ale, with 
mounting gusto. We talked, of course, of Susan. 

Jimmy, inclined to a rosier view by comfortable reple- 
tion, now maintained that perhaps after all Susan had done 
the natural and sensible thing in joining Miss Leslie. He 
emphasized all the obvious advantages — complete change of 
environment, freedom from financial worry, and so on; 
then he paused. . . . 

“And there’s another point, Mr. Hunt,” he began again, 
doubtfully this time: “Prof. Farmer and I were talking 
about it only the other day. We were wondering whether 
we oughtn’t to speak to you. But it’s not the easiest thing 
to speak of — it’s so sort of vague — kind of a feeling in 
the air.” 

I knew at once what he referred to, and nodded my head. 
“So you and Phil have noticed it too!” 

“Oh, you’re on then? I’m glad of that, sir. You’ve 
never mentioned anything, so Prof. Farmer and I couldn’t 
be sure. But it’s got under our skins that it might make 
a lot of trouble and something ought to be done about it. 
It’s hard to see what.” 

“Very,” I agreed. “Fire ahead, Jimmy. Tell me ex- 
actly what has come to you — to you, personally, I mean.” 

“Well,” said Jimmy, leaning across the table to me 
and lowering his voice, “it was all of three weeks ago. 
I went to a dance at the Lawn Club. I don’t dance very 
well, but I figure a fellow ought to know how if he ever has 
to, so I’ve slipped in a few lessons. I can keep off my part- 
ner’s feet, anyway. Well, Steve Putnam took me round 
that night and introduced me to some girls. I guess if 
they’d known my mother was living in New Haven and 
married to a grocer, they wouldn’t have had anything to 
do with me. Maybe I ought to advertise the fact, but I 


226 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


don ’t — simply because I can ’t stand for my stepfather, and 
so mother won’t stand for me. Mother and I never could 
get on, though; and it’s funny, too — as a general rule I 
can get on with ’most everybody. I told Prof. Farmer 
the other night there must be something wrong with a 
fellow who can’t get on with his own mother — but he only 
laughed. Of course, Mr. Hunt, I’m not exactly sailing 
under false pretenses, either; if any girl wanted to make 
real friends with me — I ’d tell her all about myself 
first.” 

“Of course,” I murmured. 

“And the same with men. Steve, for instance. He 
knows all about me, and his father has a lot of money, but 
he made it in soap — and Steve’s from the West, anyway, 
and don ’t care. Gee, I ’m wandering — it ’s the ale, I guess, 
Mr. Hunt; I’m not used to it. The point is, Steve intro- 
duced me round, and I like girls all right, but Susan’s 
kind of spoiled me for the way most of them gabble. 
I can’t do that easy, quick- talk very good yet; Steve’s 
a bear at it. Well — I sat out a dance with one of the 
girls, a Miss Simmons; pretty, too; but she’s only a kid. 
It was her idea, sitting out the dance in a corner — I 
thought she didn’t like the way I handled myself. But 
that wasn’t it. Mr. Hunt, she wanted to pump me; went 
right at it, too. 

“ ‘You know Mr. Hunt awfully well, don’t you?’ she 
asked; and after I’d said yes, and we’d sort of sparred 
round a little, she suddenly got confidential, and a kind 
of thrilled look came into her eyes, and then she asked 
me straight out: ‘Have you ever heard there was some- 
thing — mysterious — about poor Mrs. Hunt’s death?’ 

“ ‘No,’ I said. 

“ ‘Haven’t you!’ she said, as much as to tell me she 
knew, all the same, I must have. ‘Why, Mr. Kane, it’s all 
over town. Nobody knows anything, but it’s terribly ex- 
citing! Some people think she committed suicide, ail be- 
cause of that queer Miss Blake. . . . She must be — you 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


227 


know ! And now she ’s run away to Europe ! I believe she 
was just afraid to stay over here, afraid she might be found 
out or arrested — or something!’ 

“That’s the way she went on, Mr. Hunt; and, well — 
naturally, I pooh-poohed it and steered her off, and then 
she lost interest in me right away. But she’s right, Mr. 
Hunt. There’s a lot of that kind of whispered stuff in 
the air, and I’m mighty glad Susan’s off for a year or 
two where she can’t run into it. It’ll all die out before 
she’s back again, of course.” 

“I hope so,” was my reply; “but the source of these 
rumors is very persistent — and very discreet. They start 
from Mrs. Arthur; they must. But it’s impossible to trace 
them back to her. Jimmy, she means to make New Haven 
impossible for me, and I’ve an idea she’s likely to succeed. 
Already, three or four old acquaintances have — well, 
avoided me, and the general atmosphere’s cooling pretty 
rapidly toward zero. So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t 
much matter ; but it does matter for Susan. She may re- 
turn to find her whole future clouded by a settled impres- 
sion that in some way — indirectly — or even, directly — she 
was responsible for my wife’s sudden death.” 

“It’s a damned outrage!” exclaimed Jimmy. “I don’t 
know Mrs. Arthur, but I’d like to wring her neck!” 

“So would I, Jimmy; and she knows it. That’s why 
she’s finding life these days so supremely worth living.” 

Jimmy pondered this. “Gee, I hate to think that badly 
of any woman,” he finally achieved ; “but I guess it doesn’t 
do to be a fool and think they’re all angels — like Susan. 
Mother’s not.” 

“No, Jimmy, it doesn’t do,” I responded. “Still, the 
price for that kind of wisdom is always much higher than 
it’s worth.” 

“Women,” began Jimmy But his aphorism some- 

how escaped him ; he decided to light a cigarette instead. . . . 

And on this wave of cynicism I floated him off with me 
to The Puppet Booth. 


228 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


IV 

From the point of view of eccentric effectiveness and 
reclame wonders had been wrought with the small, ancient, 
brick stable on Macdougal Street ; but very little had been 
or could be done for the comfort of its guests. The flat 
exterior wall had been stuccoed and brilliantly frescoed 
to suggest the entrance to some probably questionable 
side-show at a French village fair; and a gay clown with 
a drum, an adept at amusing local patter, had been sta- 
tioned before the door to emphasize the funambulesque 
illusion. Within, this atmosphere — as of something gaudy 
and transitory, the mere lath-and-canvas pitch of a vaga- 
bond banquiste — had been cleverly carried out. The 
cramped little theater itself struck one as mere scenery, 
which was precisely the intention. There was clean saw- 
dust on the floor, and the spectators — one hundred of 
them suffocatingly filled the hall — were provided only with 
wooden benches, painted a vivid Paris green. These 
benches had been thoughtfully selected, however, and were 
less excruciating to sit on than you would suppose. There 
was, naturally, no balcony; a false pitch-roof had been 
constructed of rough stable beams, from which hung ban- 
nerets in a crying, carefully studied dissonance of strong 
color, worthy of the barbaric Bakst. The proscenium arch 
was necessarily a toylike affair, copied, you would say, 
from the Guinol in the Tuileries Gardens ; and the curtain, 
for a final touch, looked authentic — had almost certainly 
been acquired, at some expenditure of thought and trouble, 
from a traveling Elks’ Carnival. There was even a false 
set of footlights to complete the masquerade ; a row of oil 
lamps with tin reflectors. It was all very restless and 
amusing — and extravagantly make-believe. . . . 

Jimmy and I arrived just in time to squeeze down the 
single narrow side-aisle and into our places in the fourth 
row. We had no opportunity to glance about us or con- 
sult our broad-sheet programs, none to acquire the proper 
mood of tense expectancy we later succumbed to, before the 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


229 


lights were lowered and the curtain was rolled up in the 
true antique style. “Gee!” muttered Jimmy, on my left, 
with involuntary dislike. “Ah!” breathed a maiden, on 
my right, with entirely voluntary rapture. Someone in the 
front row giggled, probably a cub reporter doing duty that 
evening as a dramatic critic ; but he was silenced by a sharp 
hiss from the rear. 

The cause for these significant reactions was the mise 
en scene of the tiny vacant stage. It consisted of three 
dead-black walls, a dead-black ceiling, and a dead-black 
floor-cloth. In the back wall there was a high, narrow 
crimson door with a black knob. A tall straight-legged 
table and one straight high-backed chair, both lacquered 
in crimson, were the only furniture, except for a slender 
crimson-lacquered perch, down right, to which was chained 
a yellow, green and crimson macaw. And through the 
crimson door presently entered — undulated, rather — a per- 
sonable though poisonous young woman in a trailing robe 
of vivid yellow and green. 

The play that followed, happily a brief one, was called 
— as Jimmy and I learned from our programs at its con- 
clusion — “Polly.” It consisted of a monologue delivered 
by the poisonous young woman to the macaw, occasionally 
varied by ad lib. screams and chuckles from that evil white- 
eyed bird. From the staccato remarks of the poisonous 
young woman, we, the audience, were to deduce the erratic 
eroticism of an dme damnee . It was not particularly diffi- 
cult to do so, nor was it particularly entertaining. As a 
little adventure in supercynicism, “Polly,” in short, was 
not particularly successful. It needed, and had not been 
able to obtain, the boulevard wit of a Sacha Guitry to 
carry it off. But the poisonous young woman had an 
exquisitely proportioned figure, and her arms, bare to the 
slight shoulder-straps, were quite faultless. Minor effects 
of this kind have, even on Broadway, been known to save 
more than one bad quarter hour from complete collapse. 

. . . No, it was not the author’s lines that carried us safely 
through this first fifteen minutes of diluted Strindberg- 


230 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Schnitzler ! And the too deliberately bizarre mise en scene , 
though for a moment it piqued curiosity, had soon proved 
wearisome, and we were glad — at least, Jimmy and I were 
— to have it veiled from our eyes. 

The curtain rolled down, nevertheless, to ecstatic cries 
and stubbornly sustained applause. Raised lights revealed 
an excited, chattering band of the faithful. The poisonous 
young woman took four curtain calls and would seemingly, 
from her parting gesture, have drawn us collectively to 
her fine bosom with those faultless, unreluctant arms. And 
the maiden on my right shuddered forth to her escort, 
“I’m thrilled, darling! Feel them — feel my hands — 
they’re moon-cold! They always are, you know, when I’m 
thrilled ! ’ ’ 

“You can’t beat this much, Mr. Hunt,” whispered 
Jimmy, on my left. “It’s bughouse.” 

In a sense, it was ; in a truer sense, it was not. A care- 
ful analysis of the audience would, I was quickly convinced, 
have disclosed not merely a saving remnant, but a saving 
majority of honest workmen in the arts — men and women 
too solidly endowed with brains and humor for any self- 
conscious posing or public exhibition of temperament. 
The genuine freaks among us were a scant handful; but 
it is the special talent and purpose of your freak to — in 
Whitman’s phrase — “positively appear.” Ten able freaks 
to the hundred can turn any public gathering into a side 
show; and the freaks of the Village, particularly the 
females of the species, are nothing if not able. Minna 
Freund, for example, who was sitting just in front of 
Jimmy ; it would be difficult for any assembly to obliterate 
Minna Freund! She was, that night, exceptionally repul- 
sive in a sort of yellow silk wrapper, with her sparrow’s 
nest of bobbed Henner hair, and her long, bare, olive-green 
neck, that so obviously needed to be scrubbed ! 

Having strung certain entirely unrelated words together 
and called them “Portents,” she had in those days acquired 
a minor notoriety, and Susan — impishly enjoying my con- 
sequent embarrassment — had once introduced me to her 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


231 


as an admirer of her work, at an exhibition of Cubist 
sculpture. Minna was standing at the time, I recalled, be- 
fore Pannino ’s “Study of a Morbid Complex/’ and she 
at once informed me that the morbid complex in question 
had been studied from the life. She had posed her own 
destiny for Pannino, so she assured me, at three separate 
moments of psychic crisis, and the inevitable result had 
been a masterpiece. ‘ ‘ How it writhes ! ’ ’ she had exclaimed : 
but to my uninstructed eyes Pannino ’s Study did anything 
but writhe; it was stolidly passive; it looked precisely as 
an ostrich egg on a pedestal would look if viewed in a 
slightly convex mirror. . . . How far away all that stupid 
nonsense seems ! 

And, suddenly, Jimmy leaped on the bench beside me 
as if punctured by a pin: “Oh, good Lord, Mr. Hunt!” 
he groaned. “Look here!” 

He had thrust his program before me and was point- 
ing to the third play of the series with an unsteady finger. 

“It’s the same name,” he whispered hoarsely; “the 
one she’s used for her book. Do you think ” 

“I’ll soon find out,” was my answer. “We must know 
what we’re in for, Jimmy!” And just as the lights were 
lowered for the second play I rose, defying audible unpopu- 
larity, and squeezed my way out to the door. That is why 
I cannot describe for you the second play, a harsh little 
tragedy of the sweatshops — “Horrible,” Jimmy affirmed, 
“but it kind of got me!” — written by an impecunious 
young man with expensive tastes, who has since won the 
means of gratifying them along Broadway by concocting 
for that golden glade his innocently naughty librettos — - 
“Tra-la, Therese!” and “Oft, Mercy , Modestine!” 

Having sought and interviewed Stalinski — I found him 
huddled in the tiny box-office, perspiring unpleasantly from 
nervousness and many soaring emotions — I was back in my 
•seat, more unpopular than ever, in good time for Susan’s 
— it was unquestionably Susan’s — play. 

But most of you have read, or have seen, or have read 
about, Susan's play. . . . 


232 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


It was the sensation of the evening, of many subsequent 
evenings; and I have often wondered precisely why — for 
there is in it nothing sensational. Its atmosphere is deli- 
cately fantastic; remote, you would say, from the sympa- 
thies of a matter-of-fact world, particularly as its fantasy 
is not the highly sentimentalized make-believe of some 
popular fairy tale. This fantasy of Susan’s is ironic and 
grave ; simple in movement, too — just a few subtle modula- 
tions on a single poignant theme. And I ask myself 
wherein lies its throat-tightening quality, its irresistible 
appeal? And I find but one answer; an answer which I 
had always supposed, in my long intellectual snobbery, an 
undeserved compliment to the human race; a compliment 
no critic, who was not either dishonest or a fool, could 
pay mankind. 

But what other explanation can be given for the suc- 
cess of Susan’s play, both here and in England, than its 
sheer beauty? Beauty of substance, of mood, of form, of 
quiet, heart-searching phrase ! It is not called ‘ ‘ The Magic 
Circle, ’ ’ but it might have been ; for its magic is genuine, 
distilled from the depths of Nature, and it casts an un- 
escapable spell — on poets and bankers, on publicans and 
prostitutes and priests, on all and sundry, equally and 
alike. It even casts its spell on those who act in it, and 
no truer triumph can come to an author. I have never 
seen it really badly played. Susan has never seen it played 
at all. 

On the first wave of this astonishing triumph, Susan’s 
pen-name was swept into the newspapers and critical 
journals of America and England, and a piquant point 
for gossip was added by the revelation that “Dax,” who 
for several months had so wittily enlivened the columns 
of Whim, was one and the same person. Moreover, it was 
soon bruited about that the author was a slip of a girl — 
radiantly beautiful, of course; or why romance concerning 
her ! — and that there was something mysterious, even sinis- 
ter, in her history. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


233 


“A child of the underworld, ’ ’ said one metropolitan 
journal, in its review of her poems. Popular legend pres- 
ently connected her, though vaguely, with the criminal 
classes. I have heard an overdressed woman in a theater 
lobby earnestly assuring another that she knew for a fact 

that (Susan) had been born in a brothel — “one of 

those houses, my dear” — and brought up — like Oliver 
Twist, though the comparison escaped her — to be a thief. 

And so it was that the public eye lighted for a little 
hour on Susan’s shy poems. Poetry was said to be looking 
up in those days ; and influential critics in their influential, 
uninfluenced way suddenly boomed these, saying mostly 
the wrong things about them, but saying them over and 
over with energy and persistence. The first edition van- 
ished overnight; a larger second edition was printed and 
sold out within a week or two ; a still larger third edition 
was launched and disposed of more slowly. Then came 
the war. . . . 


v 

If I can say anything good of the war, it is this: Since 
seemingly it must have come anyway, sooner or later, so 
far as Susan is concerned it came just in time. A letter 
from Phil to Susan, received toward the close of July, 
1914, at the chateau of the Comtesse de Bligny, near Brus- 
sels, will tell you why. 

“Dear Susan: If the two or three notes I’ve sent you 
previously have been brief and dull, I knew you would 
make the inevitable allowances and forgive me. In the 
first place, God didn’t create me to scintillate, as you’ve 
long had reason to know; and since you left us I’ve been 
buried in a Sahara of work, living so retired a life in my 
desert that little news comes my way. But Jimmy breaks 
in on me, always welcomely, with an occasional bulletin, 
and last night Hunt came over and we had a long evening 
together. He’s worried, Susan, not without great cause, I 


234 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


fear ; he looks tired and ill ; and after mulling things over, 
with my usual plodding caution — I’ve thought best to ex- 
plain the situation to you. 

“It can be put in very few words. The deserved suc- 
cess of your play and the poems, following a natural law 
that one too helplessly wishes otherwise, has led to a crisis 
in the gossip — malicious in origin, certainly — which has 
fastened upon you and Hunt; and this gossip lately has 
taken a more sinister turn. More and more openly it is 
being said that the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Hunt’s 
death ought to be probed — 'probed’ is just now the popular 
word in this connection. The feeling is widespread that 
you were in some way responsible for it. 

“I must use brutal phrases to lay the truth before you. 
You are not, seemingly, suspected of murder. You are sus- 
pected of having killed Mrs. Hunt during a sudden access 
of mental irresponsibility. It is whispered that Hunt, im- 
properly, in some devious way, got the matter hushed up 
and the affair reported as an accident. As a result of these 
absurd and terrible rumors, Hunt finds himself a pariah — 
many of his oldest acquaintances no longer recognize him 
when they meet. It is a thoroughly distressing situation, 
and it’s difficult to see how the mad injustice of it can be 
easily righted. 

“The danger is, of course, that some misguided person 
will get the whole matter into the newspapers; it is really 
a miracle that it has not already been seized on by some 
yellow sheet, the opportunity for a sensational story is so 
obviously ripe. Happily” — oh, Phil! oh, philosopher! — 
“the present curious tension in European politics is for 
the moment turning journalistic eyes far from home. But 
as all such diplomatic flurries do, this one will pass, leav- 
ing the flatness of the silly season upon us. This is what 
Hunt most fears ; and when you next see him you will find 
him grayer and older because of this anxiety. 

“He dreads, for you, a sudden journalistic demand for 
a public investigation, and feels — though in this I can 
hardly agree with him — that such a demand could end only 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 235 

in a public trial, in view of the peculiar nature of all the 
circumstances involved — a veritable cause celebre. 

“How shocking all this must be to you. The sense of 
the mental anguish I’m causing you is a horror to me. 
Nothing could have induced me to write in this way but 
the compulsion of my love for Hunt and you. It seems 
to me imperative that your names should be publicly 
cleared, in advance of any public outcry. 

“So I urge you, Susan — fully conscious of my personal 
responsibility in doing so — to return at once and to join 
with Hunt and your true friends in quashing finally and 
fully these damnable lies. It is my strong conviction that 
this is your duty to yourself, to Hunt, and to us all. 
If you and Hunt, together or separately, make a public 
statement, in view of the rumors now current, and your- 
selves demand the fullest public investigation of the facts, 
there can be but one issue. Your good names will be 
cleared; the truth will prevail. Dreadful as this prospect 
must be for you both, it now seems to me — and let me 
add, to Jimmy — the one wise course for you to take. But 
only you, if you agree with me, can persuade Hunt to 
such a course. ...” 

It is unnecessary to quote the remaining paragraphs of 
Phil ’s so characteristic letter. 

No doubt Susan would have returned immediately if she 
could, but, less than a week after the receipt of Phil’s 
letter, the diplomatic flurry in Europe had taken a German 
army through Luxemburg and into Belgium, and within 
less than two weeks Susan and Mona Leslie and the Com- 
tesse de Bligny were in uniform, working a little less than 
twenty-four hours a day with the Belgian Red Cross. . . . 

It is no purpose of mine to attempt any description of 
Susan’s war experience or service. Those first corroding 
weeks and months of the war have left ineffaceable scars 
on the consciousness of the present generation. I was not 
a part of them, and can add nothing to them by talking 


236 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


about them at second hand. It might, however, repay you 
to read — if you have not already done so — a small anony- 
mous volume which has passed through some twenty or 
thirty editions, entitled Stupidity Triumphant , and con- 
taining the brief, sharply etched personal impressions of a 
Red Cross nurse in Flanders during the early days of 
Belgium’s long agony. It is now an open secret that this 
little book was written by Susan ; and among the countless 
documents on frightfulness this one, surely, by reason of its 
simplicity and restraint, its entire absence of merely hys- 
terical outcry, is not the least damning and not — I venture 
to believe — the least permanent. 

There is one short paragraph in this book of detached 
pictures, marginal notes, and condensed reflections that 
brought home to me, personally, war , the veritable thing 
itself, as no other written lines were able to do — as noth- 
ing was able to do until I had seen the beast with my own 
eyes. It is not an especially striking paragraph, and just 
why it should have done so I am unable to say. Certain 
extracts from the book have been widely quoted — one even, 
I am told, was read out in Parliament by Arthur Hender- 
son — but I have never seen this one quoted anywhere; so 
I am rather at a loss to explain its peculiar influence on me. 
Entirely individual reactions to the printed word are 
always a little mysterious. I know, for example, one 
usually enlightened and catholic critic who stubbornly 
maintains that a very commonplace distich by Lord De 
Tabley is the most magical moment in all English verse. 
But here is my paragraph — or Susan’s — for what it is 
worth : 

“This Pomeranian prisoner was a blond boy-giant; piti- 
fully shattered ; it was necessary to remove his left leg to 
the knee. The operation was rapidly but skillfully per- 
formed. He was then placed on a pallet, close beside the 
cot of a wounded German officer. After coming out of the 
ether his fever mounted and he grew delirious. The Ger- 
man officer commanded him to be silent. He might just as 
well have commanded the sun to stand still, and he must, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


237 


however muzzily, have known that. Yet he was outraged 
by this unconscious act of insubordination. Thrice he re- 
peated his absurd command — then raised himself with a 
groan, leaned across, and struck the delirious boy in the 
face with a weakly clenched fist. It was not a heavy blow ; 
the officer’s strength did not equal his intention. ‘Idiot!’ 
I cried out; and thrust him back on his cot, half-fainting 
from the pain of his futile effort at discipline. ‘Idiot’ was, 
after all, the one appropriate word. It was constantly, I 
found, the one appropriate word. The beast was a stupid 
beast.” 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


I 

P HIL FARMER and Jimmy Kane stayed on in New 
Haven that summer of 1914; Phil to be near his pre- 
cious sources in the Yale library; Jimmy to be near his 
new job. As soon as his examinations were over he had 
gone to work in a factory in a very humble capacity; but 
he was not destined to remain there long in any capacity, 
nor was it written in the stars that he was to complete 
his education at Yale. 

My own reasons for clinging to New Haven were less 
definite. Sheer physical inertia had something to do with 
it, no doubt; but chiefly I stayed because New Haven in 
midsummer is a social desert; and in those days my most 
urgent desire was to be alone. Apart from all else, the 
breaking out of almost world-wide war had drastically, as 
if by an operation for spiritual cataract, opened my inner 
eye, no longer a bliss in solitude, to much that was trivial 
and self-satisfied and ridiculous in one Ambrose Hunt, Esq. 
That Susan should be in the smoke of that spreading hor- 
ror brought it swiftly and vividly before me. I lived the 
war from the first. 

For years, with no felt discomfort to myself, I had been 
a pacifist. I was a contributing member of several peace 
societies, and in one of my slightly better-known essays I 
had expounded with enthusiasm Tolstoy ’s doctrine — which, 
in spite of much passionate argument to the contrary these 
troublous times, was assuredly Christ’s — of nonresistance 
to evil. I was, in fact, though in a theoretical, parlor sense 
a proclaimed Tolstoyan, a Christian anarchist — lacking, 
however, the essential groundwork for Tolstoy’s doctrine: 

238 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


239 


faith. Faith in God as a person, as a father, I could not 
confess to; but the higher anarchist vision of humanity 
freed from all control save that of its own sweet reason- 
ableness, of men turned unfailingly gentle, mutually help- 
ful, content to live simply if need be, but never with un- 
uplifted hearts — well, I could and did confess publicly that 
no other vision had so strong an attraction for me! 

I liked to dwell in the idea of such a world, to think of 
it as a possibility — less remote, perhaps, than mankind in 
general supposed. Having lived through the Spanish War, 
the Boer War, and Russia’s war with Japan; and in a 
world constantly strained to the breaking point by national 
rivalries, commercial expansion, and competition for mar- 
kets ; by class struggles everywhere apparent ; by the harsh, 
discordant energies of its predatory desires — I, neverthe- 
less, had been able to persuade myself that the darkest 
days of our dust-speck planet were done with and recorded ; 
Earth and its graceless seed of Adam were at last, to quote 
Jimmy, “on their way” — well on their way, I assured 
myself, toward some inevitable region of abiding and 
beneficent light ! 

Pouf! . . . And then? 

Stricken in solitude, I went down into dark places and 
fumbled like a starved beggar amid the detritus of my 
dreams. Dust and shadow. . . .Was there anything real 
there, anything worth the pain of spiritual salvage? Had 
I been, all my life, merely one more romanticist, one more 
sentimental trifler in a universe whose ways were not those * 
of pleasantness, nor its paths those of peace ? Surely, yes ; 
for my heart convicted me at once of having wasted all my 
days hitherto in a fool’s paradise. The rough fabric of 
human life was not spun from moonshine. So much at 
least was certain. And nothing else was left me. Hurled 
from my private, make-believe Eden, I must somehow begin 
anew. 


“Brief beauty , and much weariness. . . 


240 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Susan’s line haunted me throughout the first desperate 
isolation of those hours. I saw no light, I was broken in 
spirit. I was afraid. 

Morbidity, you will say. Why, yes; why not? To be 
brainsick and heartsick in a cruel and unfamiliar world 
is to be morbid. I quite agree. Below the too-thin crust 
of a dilettante’s culture lies always that hungry morass. A 
world had been shaken ; the too-thin crust beneath my feet 
had crumbled ; I must slither now in slime, and either sink 
there finally, be swallowed up in that sucking blackness, 
or by some miracle of effort win beyond, set my feet on stiff 
granite, and so survive. 

It is most probable that I should never have reached solid 
ground unaided. It was Jimmy, of all people, who 
stretched forth a vigorous, impatient hand. 

Shortly after the First Battle of the Marne had dammed 
— we knew not how precariously, or how completely — the 
deluge pouring through Belgium and Luxemburg and 
Northern France, Jimmy burst in on me one evening. He 
had just received a brief letter from Susan. She was 
stationed then at Furnes; Mona Leslie was with her; but 
their former hostess, the young pleasure-loving Comtesse 
de Bligny, was dead. The cause of her death Susan did 
not even stop to explain. 

* 4 Mona,” she hurried on, “is magnificent. Only a few 
months ago I pitied her, almost despised her ; now I could 
kiss her feet. How life had wasted her ! She doesn’t know 
fear or fatigue, and she has just put her entire fortune un- 
reservedly at the service of the Belgian Government — to 
found field hospitals, ambulances, and so on. The king 
has decorated her. Not that she cares — has time to think 
about it, I mean. In a sense it irritated her; she spoke 
of it all to me as an unnecessary gesture. Oh, Jimmy, come 
over — we need you here ! Bring all America over with you 
— if you can ! Setebos invented neutrality ; I recognize his 
workmanship! Bring Ambo — bring Phil! Don’t stop to 
think about it — come!” 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 241 

‘ ‘ I ’m going of course, ’ ’ said Jimmy. 4 4 So ’s Prof. Farm- 
er. How about you, sir?” 

“Phil’s going?” 

‘ 4 Sure. J ust as soon as he can arrange it. ’ ’ 

“His book’s finished?” 

“What the hell has that ” began Jimmy; then 

stopped dead, blushing. 4 ‘ Excuse me, Mr. Hunt ; but books, 
somehow — just now — they don’t seem so important as — 
seeV ’ 

“Not quite, Jimmy. After all, the real struggle’s always 
between ideas, isn’t it? We can’t perfect the world with 
guns and ambulances, Jimmy.” 

4 4 Maybe not,” said Jimmy dryly. 

4 4 It’s quite possible,” I insisted, 4 4 that Phil’s book might 
accomplish more for humanity, in the long run, than any- 
thing he could do at his age in Flanders. ’ ’ 

4 4 Susan could come home and write plays,” said Jimmy; 
4 4 good ones, too. But she won’t. You can bet on that, 
sir.” 

“I’ve never believed in war, Jimmy; never believed it 
could possibly help us onward.” 

“Maybe it can’t,” interrupted Jimmy. 44 I’ve never be- 
lieved in cancer, either; it’s very painful and kills a lot of 
people. You’d better come with us, sir. You’ll be sorry 
you didn’t — if you don’t,” 

4 4 Why? You know my ideas on nonresistance, Jimmy.” 

4 4 Oh, ideas!” grunted Jimmy. “I know you’re a white 
man, Mr. Hunt. That’s enough for me. I’m not worrying 
much about your ideas.” 

4 4 But whatever we do, Jimmy, there’s an idea behind it; 
there must be.” 

“Nachur’ly,” said Jimmy. 4 4 Those are the only ones 
that count ! I can ’t see you letting Susan risk her life day 
in an’ out to help people who are being wronged, while 
you sit over here and worry about what’s going to happen 
in a thousand years or so — after we ’re all good and dead ! 
Not much I can ’t ! The point is, there ’s the rotten mess — 


242 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


and Susan ’s in it, trying to make it better — and we ’re not. 
Prof. Farmer got it all in a flash ! He’ll be round presently 
to make plans. Well — how about it, sir?” 

Granite ! Granite at last, unshakable, beneath my feet ! 

Then, too, Susan was over there, and Jimmy and Phil 
were going, without a moment’s hesitation, at her behest! 
But I have always hoped, and I do honestly believe, that it 
was not entirely that. 

No ; romanticist or not, I will not submit to the assump- 
tion that of two possible motives for any decently human 
action, it is always the lower motive that turns the trick. 
La Rochefoucauld to the contrary, self-interest is not the 
inevitable mainspring of man; though, sadly I admit, it 
seems to be an indispensable cog-wheel in his complicated 
works. . . . 

n 

And now, properly apprehensive reader — whom, in the 
interests of objectivity, which has never interested me, I 
should never openly address — are you not unhappy in the 
prospect of another little tour through trench and hospital, 
of one more harrowing account of how the Great War made 
a Great Man of him at last ? 

Be comforted ! One air raid I cannot spare you ; but I 
can spare you much. To begin with, I can spare you, or 
all but spare you, a month or so over three whole years. 

You may think it incredible, but it is merely true, that 
I had been in Europe for more than three years — and I 
had not as yet seen Susan. Phil had seen her, just once ; 
Jimmy had seen her many times ; and I had run into them 
— singly, never together — off and on, here and there, dur- 
ing those slow-swift days of unremitting labor. If to labor 
desperately in a heartfelt cause be really to pray, the ear 
of Heaven has been besieged ! But, in common humanity, 
there was always more crying to be done than mortal brains 
or hands or accumulated wealth could compass. Once 
plunged into that glorious losing struggle against the ap- 
palling hosts of Misery, one could only fight grimly on — on 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 243 

— on — to the last hoarded ounce of strength and deter- 
mination. 

But the odds were hopeless, fantastic! Those Titan 
forces of human suffering and degradation, so half-wittedly 
let loose throughout Europe, grew ever vaster, more terri- 
ble in maleficent power. They have ravaged the world; 
they have ravaged the soul. An armistice has been signed, 
a peace treaty is being drafted, a League of Nations is 
being formed — or deformed — but those Titan forces still 
mock our poor efforts with calamitous laughter. They are 
still in fiercely, stubbornly disputed, but unquestionable 
possession of the field — insolent conquerors to this hour. 
The real war, the essential war, the war against the un- 
consciously self-willed annihilation of earth’s tragic egoist, 
Man, has barely begun. Its issue is ever uncertain ; and it 
will not be ended in our days. . . . 

Phil and Jimmy had gone over on the same boat, via 
England, about the middle of October, 1914. At that time 
organized American relief -work in Europe was really non- 
existent, and in order to obtain some freedom of movement 
on the other side, and a chance to study out possible op- 
portunities for effective service, Phil had persuaded Hey- 
wood Sampson to appoint him continental correspondent 
for the new review ; and Jimmy went with him, ostensibly 
as his private secretary. 

It was all the merest excuse for obtaining passports and 
permission to enter Belgium, if that should prove imme- 
diately advisable after reaching London. It did not. Once 
in London, Phil had very soon found himself up to the 
eyes in work. Through Mr. Page, the American Ambassa- 
dor — so lately dead — he was introduced to Mr. Herbert C. 
Hoover, and after a scant twenty minutes of conversation 
was seized by Mr. Hoover and plunged, with barely a gasp 
for breath, into that boiling sea of troubles — the organiza- 
tion of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. It does not 
take Mr. Hoover very long to size up the worth and sta- 
bility of any man ; but in Phil he had found — and he knew 
he had found— a peculiar treasure. Phil’s unfailing pa- 


244 


THE BOOK OP SUS&N 


tienee, his thoroughness and courtesy, quickly endeared him 
to all his colleagues and did much to make possible the 
successful launching of the vastest and most difficult proj- 
ect for relief ever undertaken by mortal men. Thus, almost 
overnight, Jimmy’s private secretaryship became anything 
but a sinecure. For nearly three months their labors held 
them in London; then they were sent — not unadventur- 
ously — to Brussels ; there to arrange certain details of dis- 
tribution with Mr. Whitlock, the American Minister, and 
with the directors of the Belgian Comite National. 

But from Brussels their paths presently diverged. 
Jimmy, craving activity, threw himself into the actual work 
of food distribution in the stricken eastern districts ; while 
Phil passed gravely on to Herculean labors at the shipping 
station of the “C. It. B.” in Rotterdam. He remained in 
Rotterdam for upward of a year. Susan, meanwhile, had 
been driven with the Belgian Army from Furnes, and was 
now attached to the operating-room of a small field or. 
receiving-hospital, which squatted amphibiously in a water- 
logged fragment of village not far from the Yser and the 
flooded German lines. It was a post of danger, constantly 
under fire ; and she was the one woman who clung to it — 
who insisted upon being permitted to cling to it, and car- 
ried her point; and, under conditions fit neither for man 
nor beast, unflinchingly carried on. Mona Leslie was no 
longer beside her. She had retired to Dunkirk to aid in 
the organization of relief for ever-increasing hordes of 
civilian refugees. 

And where, meanwhile, was one Ambrose Hunt, some- 
time dilettante at large ? 

It had proved impossible for me to sail with Phil and 
Jimmy. Just as the preliminary arrangements were being 
made, Aunt Belle was stricken down by apoplexy, while 
walking among the roses of her famous Spanish gardens in 
Santa Barbara, and so died, characteristically intestate, 
and, to my astonishment, I found that I had become the 
sole inheritor of her estate; all of “ Hyena Parker’s” 
tainted millions had suddenly poured their burdensome 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


245 


tide of responsibilities — needlessly and unwelcomely — upon 
me. There was nothing for it. Out to California, willy- 
nilly, I must go, and waste precious weeks there with 
lawyers and house agents and other tiresome human 
necessities. 

The one cheering thought in all this annoying pother 
was — and it was a thought that grew rapidly in significance 
to me as I journeyed westward — that fate had now made 
it possible for me to purify Hyena Parker’s millions by 
putting them to work for mankind. — Well, they have since 
done their part, to the last dollar; they have spent them- 
selves in the losing battle against Misery, and are no more. 
Nothing became their lives like the ending of them. But 
for all that, the world, you see, is as it is — and the battle 
goes on. 

Phil kept in touch with me from the other side, in spite 
of his difficulties — as did Jimmy and Susan — and he had 
prepared the way for me when at length I could free my- 
self and sail. I was instructed to go to Paris, direct, and 
fulfill certain duties there in connection with the ever- 
increasing burdens and exasperations of the “C. R. B.” 
I did so. Sixfcmonths later my activities were transferred 
to Berne; and— not to trace in detail the evolution of my 
career, such as it was; for though useful, I hope, it was 
never, like Phil’s, exceptionally brilliant — I had become, 
about the period of America’s entry into the war, a modest 
captain in the Red Cross, stationed at Evian, in connection 
with the endless, heartbreaking task of repatriating 
refugees from the invaded districts. And there my job 
rooted me until January of that dark winter of our un- 
speakable depression, 1918. 

With the beginning of America’s entry into the war Phil 
had gone to Petrograd for the American Red Cross, his 
commission being to save the lives of as many Russian 
babies as possible by the distribution of canned milk. Then, 
one evening — early in September, 1917, it must have been 
— he started alone for Moscow, to lay certain wider plans 
for disinterested relief -work before the sinister, the almost 


246 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


mythical Lenine. That is the last that has ever been seen 
of him, and no word has ever come forth directly from 
him out of the chaos men still call Russia. The Red Cross 
and the American and French Governments have done 
their utmost to discover his whereabouts, without avail. 
There are reasons for believing he is not dead, nor even 
a prisoner. The dictators of the soviet autocracy have 
been unable to find a trace of him, so they affirm ; and there 
are reasons also for believing that this is true. 

As for Jimmy, you will not be surprised to learn that 
Jimmy had not long been content with relief-work of any 
kind. He was young ; and he had seen things — there, in tte 
eastern districts. By midsummer of 1915 he had resigned 
from the “C. R. B.,” had made a difficult way to Paris, 
via Holland and England, had enlisted in the Foreign 
Legion, and had succeeded in getting himself transferred 
to the French Flying Corps. Thus, months before we had 
officially abandoned our absurd neutrality, he was flying 
over the lines — bless him ! If Jimmy never became a world- 
famous ace, well — there was a reason for that, too ; the best 
of reasons. He was never assigned to a combat squadron, 
for no one brought home such photographs as Jimmy ; taken 
tranquilly, methodically, at no great elevation, and often 
far back of the German lines. His quiet daring was the 
admiration of his comrades ; anti-aircraft batteries had no 
terrors for him; his luck was proverbial, and he grew to 
trust it implicitly, seeming to bear a charmed life. 

But Susan’s luck had failed her, at last. On Thanks- 
giving Day of 1917 she was wounded in the left thigh by 
a fragment of shrapnel, a painful wound whose effects 
were permanent. She will always walk slowly, with a slight 
limp, hereafter. Mona Leslie got her down as far as Paris 
by January 20, 1918, meaning to take her on to Mentone, 
where she had rented a small villa for three months of long- 
overdue rest and recuperation for them both. But on 
reaching Paris, Susan collapsed ; the accumulated strain of 
the past years struck her down. She was taken to the 
comfortable little Red Cross hospital for civilians at Neuilly 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 247 

and put to bed. A week of dangerous exhaustion and per- 
sistent insomnia followed. 

I knew nothing of it directly, at the moment. I knew 
only that on a certain day Miss Leslie had planned to 
start with Susan from Dunkirk for Mentone ; I was waiting 
eagerly for word of their safe arrival in that haven of rest 
and beauty ; and I was scheming like a junior clerk for my 
first vacation, for two weeks off, perhaps even three, that 
I might run down to them there. But no word came. 
Throughout that first week in Paris, Miss Leslie in her 
hourly anxiety neglected to drop me a line. 

And then one night, as I sat vacantly on the edge of my 
bed in my hotel room at Evian, almost too weary to begin 
the tedious sequence of undressing and tumbling into it, 
came the second of my psychic reels, my peculiar visions ; 
briefer, this one, than my first ; but no less authentic in im- 
pression, and no less clear. 


in 

I saw, this time, the interior of a small white room, 
almost bare of furniture, evidently a private room in some 
thoroughly appointed modern hospital. The patient be- 
neath the white coverlet of the single white-enamelled iron 
bed was Susan — or the wraith of Susan, so wasted was she, 
so still. My breath stopped: I thought it had been given 
me to see her at the moment of death; or already dead. 
Then the door of the small white room opened, and Jimmy 
— in his smart horizon-blue uniform with its coveted 
shoulder loop, the green-and-red fouragere that bespoke 
the bravery of his entire esquadrille — came in, treading 
carefully on the balls of his feet. As he approached the 
bedside Susan opened her eyes — great shadows, gleamless 
soot-smudges in her pitifully haggard face. It seemed that 
she was too weak even to greet him or smile ; her eyes closed 
again, and Jimmy bent down to her slowly and kissed her. 
Then Susan lifted her right hand from the coverlet — I 
could feel the effort it cost her — and touched Jimmy ’s hair. 


248 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


There was no strength in her to prolong the caress. The 
hand slipped from him to her breast. . . . And my vision 
ended. 

Its close found me on my knees on the tiled floor of my 
bedroom, as if I too had tried to go nearer, to bring myself 
close to her bedside, perhaps to bury my face in my hands 
against the white coverlet, her shroud ; to weep there. . . . 

I sprang up, wildly enough now, with a harsh shudder, 
the terrified gasp of a brute suddenly stricken from 
ambush, aware only of rooted claws and a last crushing 
fury of deep-set fangs. , 

Susan was dying. I knew not where. I could not reach 
her. But Jimmy had reached her. He had been sum- 
moned. He had not been too late. 

There are moments of blind anguish not to be reproduced 
for others. Chaos is everything — and nothing. It cannot 
be described. 

There was nothing really useful I could do that night, 
not even sleep. In those daj^s, it was impossible to move 
anywhere on the railroads of France without the proper 
passes and registrations of intention with the military 
authorities and the local police. I could, of course, suffer 
— that is always a human possibility — and I could attempt, 
muzzily enough, to think, to make plans. Where was it 
most likely that Susan would be? Was the hospital room 
that I had seen in Dunkirk, or in Nice, or at some point 
between — perhaps at Paris? It could hardly, I decided, 
be at Dunkirk; that stricken city, whose inhabitants were 
forced to dive like rats into burrows at any hour of the day 
or night. There was nothing to suggest the atmosphere of 
Dunkirk in that quiet, white-enamelled room. Nice, then — 
or Mentone? Hardly, I again reasoned; for Jimmy could 
not easily have reached them there. A day’s leave ; a flight 
from the lines, so comfortlessly close to Paris — that was 
always possible to the air-men, who were in a sense priv- 
ileged characters, being for the most part strung with taut 
nerves that chafed and snapped under too strict a dis- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


249 


cipline. And in Paris there must be many such quiet, 
white-enamelled rooms. I decided for Paris. 

Then I threw five or six articles and a bar of chocolate 
into my musette , a small water-proof pouch to sling over 
the shoulder — three years had taught me at least the need- 
lessness of almost all Hillhouse necessities — and waited for 
dawn. It came, as all dawns come at last — even in Janu- 
ary, even in France. And with it came a gulp of black 
coffee in the little deserted cafe down-stairs — and a tele- 
gram. I dared not open the telegram. It lay beside my 
plate while I stained the cloth before me and scalded my 
throat and furred my tongue. It was from Paris. So my 
decision was justified, and now quite worthless. ... I 
have no memory of the interval ; but I had got with it some- 
how back to my room — that accursed blue envelope ! 
Well 

“ Susan at Red Cross hospital for civilians, Neuilly. All 
in, but no cause for real worry. Is sleeping now for first 
time in nearly a week. I must leave by afternoon. Come 
up to her if you possibly can. She needs you. 

* 4 Jimmy/ ’ 

Four hours later all my exasperatingly complicated 
arrangements for a two-weeks’ absence were made — the 
requisite motions had been the purest somnambulism — and 
by the ample margin of fifty seconds I had caught an 
express — to do it that courtesy — moving with dignity, at 
decent intervals, toward all that I lived by and despaired 
of and held inviolably dear. But the irony of Jimmy’s 
last three words went always with me, a monotonous ache 
blurring every impulse toward hope and joy. Susan was 
not dead, was not dying! “No cause for real worry.” 
Jimmy would not have said that if he had feared the worst. 
It was not his way to shuffle with facts ; he was by nature 
direct and sincere. No; Susan would recover — thank God 
for it ! Thank — and then, under all, through all, over and 


250 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


over, that aching monotony: 4 ‘She needs you. Jimmy. 
She needs you. Jimmy. ’ ’ 

4 4 Needs me ! ’ ’ I groaned aloud. 

“ Plait-il t” politely murmured the harassed-looking little 
French captain, my vis-a-vis. 

“Mille pardons, monsieur,” I murmured back. “On a 
quelquefois des griefs particulars, vous savez.” 

“Ah dame, oui!” he sighed. “Par le temps qui court!” 

“ Et ce pachyderme de train qui ne court jamais!” I 
smiled. 

“Ah, pour ga — ga repose!” murmured the little French 
captain, and shut his eyes. 

4 4 She needs you. Jimmy. She needs you. Jimmy. She 
needs ” 

Then, miraculously, for two blotted hours I slept. But I 
woke again, utterly unrefreshed, to the old refrain: She 
needs you — needs you — needs you. . . . 

The little French captain was still asleep, snoring now — 
but softly — in his corner. Ah, lucky little French captain ! 
Qa repose! 

IV 

One afternoon, five or six days later, I was seated by the 
white-enamelled iron bed in the small white room. Susan 
had had a long, quiet, normal nap, and her brisk sparrow- 
eyed Norman nurse, in her pretty costume of the French 
Red Cross, had come to me in the little reception-room of 
the hospital, where I had been sitting for an hour stupidly 
thumbing over tattered copies of ancient American maga- 
zines, and had informed me — with rather an ambiguous 
twinkle of those sparrow eyes — that her patient had asked 
to see me as soon as she had waked, was evidently feeling 
stronger, and that it was to be hoped M. le Capitaine would 
be discreet and say nothing to excite or fatigue the poor 
little one. “Je me sauve, m’sieu,” she had added, mis- 
chievously grave; “on ne peut avoir Vceil d tout, mais — 
je compte sur vous ” 

So innocently delighted had she been by her pleasant 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


251 


suspicions, it was impossible to let her feel how sharply 
her raillery had pained me. But I could not reply in kind. 
I had merely bowed, put down the magazine in my hand, 
and so left her — to inevitable reflections, I presume, upon 
the afflicting reticence of these otherwise so agreeable allies 
d’ outre mer. Their education was evidently deplorable. 
One never knew when they would miss step, inconveniently, 
and so disarrange the entire social rhythm of a conversa- 
tion. 

“Ambo,” said Susan, putting her hand in mine, “do 
you know at all how terribly I ’ve missed you ? ’ ’ She turned 
her head weakly on her pillow and looked at me. “You’re 
older, dear. You’ve changed. I like your face better now 
than I ever did.” 

I wrinkled my nose at her. “Is that saying much?” I 
grimaced. 

“Heaps!” She attempted to smile back at me, but her 
lower lip quivered. “Yours has always been my favorite 
face, you know, Ambo. Phil’s is wiser — somehow, and 
stronger, too; and Jimmy’s is sunnier, healthier, and — yes, 
handsomer, dear ! Nobody could call you handsome, could 
they? But you’re not ugly, either. Sister was adorably 
ugly. It was a daily miracle to see the lamp in her sud- 
denly glow through and glorify everything. I used to 
wait for it. It’s the only thing that has ever made me 
feel — humble ; I never feel that way with you. I just feel 
satisfied, content,” 

“Like putting on an old pair of slippers,” I ventured. 

“That’s it,” sighed Susan happily, and closed her eyes. 

“That’s it!” echoed my familiar demon, “but no one but 
Susan would have admitted it.” 

As usual, I found it wiser to cut him dead. 

“Well, dear,” I said to Susan, “there’s one good thing: 
you’ll be able to use the old pair of slippers any time you 
need them now. I ’m to be held in Paris, I find, for a three- 
months ’ job.” 

She opened her eyes again ; disapprovingly, I felt. 

“You shouldn’t have done that, Ambo! You’re needed 


252 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


at Evian; I know you are. It’s bad enough to be out of 
things myself, but I won’t drag you out of them! How 
could you imagine that would please me?” 

“I hoped it would, a little,” I replied, “but it hasn’t 
any of it been my doing — Chatworth’s wife’s expecting a 
baby in a few weeks, and he wants to run home to welcome 
it ; I ’m to take on his executive work till he gets back. God 
knows he needs a rest!” 

“As if you didn’t, too!” protested Susan, inconsistently 
enough. Her eyes fell shut again ; her hands slipped from 
mine. “Ambo,” she asked presently, in a thread of voice 
that I had to lean down to her to hear, ‘ ‘ have they told you 
I can never have a baby now? . . . Wasn’t it lucky if that 
had to happen to some woman — it happened to me?” 

No, they had not told me; and for the moment I could 
not answer her. 

“Jimmy’s wife is going to have a baby soon,” added 
Susan. 

“ Jimmy’s — what!” I shrieked. Yes, shrieked — for, to 
my horror, I heard my voice crack and soar, strident, in- 
credulous. 

Susan was staring at me, wide-eyed, her face aquiver 
with excitement; two deep spots of color flaming on hep 
thin cheeks. 

“Didn’t you know?” 

The white door opened as she spoke, and Susan ’s Norman 
nurse hurried in, her sparrow eyes transformed to stiletto 
points of indignation. “Ah, m’sieu — c’est trop fort! When 
I told you expressly to do nothing to excite the poor little 
one !” I rose, self-convicted, before her. 

“Tais-toi, Annette !” exclaimed Susan sharply, her eyes 
too gleaming with indignation. “It is not your place to 
speak so to m’sieu, a man old enough to be your father — 
and more than a father to me ! For shame ! His surprise 
was unavoidable! I have just given him a shock — unex- 
pected news ! Good news, however, I am glad to say. Now 
leave us!” 

“On the contrary,” replied Nurse Annette, four feet 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


253 


eleven of uncompromising and awful dignity, “I am in 
charge here, and it is m’sieu who will leave — tout court! 
But I regret my vivacite, m’sieu J” 

“It is nothing, mademoiselle. You have acted as you 
should. It is for me to offer my regrets. But — when may 
I return ?” 

‘ ‘ To-morrow, m ’sieu, ’ ’ said Nurse Annette. 

“ Naturally, ’ ’ said Susan. “Now sit down, please, Ambo, 
and listen to me. ’ ’ 

For an instant the stiletto points glinted dangerously; 
then Nurse Annette giggled. That is precisely what Nurse 
Annette did; she giggled. Then she twirled about on her 
toes and left us — very quietly, yet not without a certain 
malicious ostentation, closing the door. 

The French are a brave people, an intelligent and indus- 
trious people; but they exhibit at times a levity almost 
childlike in the descendants of so ancient and so deeply 
civilized a race. . . . 

“I knew nothing about it myself, Ambo,” Susan was 
saying, “until I was beginning to feel a little stronger, 
after my operations at Dunkirk. Then Mona brought me 
letters — three from you, dear, and one long one from 
Jimmy. But no letter from Phil. I’d hoped, foolishly I 
suppose, for that. Jimmy’s was the dearest, funniest letter 
I’ve ever read; it made me laugh and cry all at once. It 
wasn’t a bit good for me, Ambo. It used me all up! And 
I kept wondering what you must be thinking. You see, 
he said in it he had written you.” 

“I’ve had no letter from Jimmy for at least five or six 
months,” I replied. 

“So many letters start bravely off over here,” sighed 
Susan, ‘ ‘ and then just vanish — like Phil. How many heart- 
breaks they must have caused, all those vanished letters — 
and men. And how silly of me to think about it ! There 
must be some fatal connection, Ambo, between being sick 
and being sentimental. I suppose sentimentality’s always 
one symptom of weakness. I ’ve never been so disgustingly 
maudlin as these past weeks — never ! ’ ’ 


254 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


“So Jimmy’s married,” I repeated stupidly, for at least 
the third time. 

“Yes,” smiled Susan, “to little Jeanne-Marie Valerie 
Josephine Aulard. I haven’t seen her, of course, but I feel 
as if I knew her well. They’ve been married now almost 
a year. ’ ’ She paused again. 4 4 Why don ’t you look gladder, 
Ambo ? Why don ’t you ask questions ? You must be dying 
to know why Jimmy kept it a secret from us so long. ’ ’ 

I had not dared to ask questions, for I believed I could 
guess why Jimmy had kept it a secret from us so long. For 
the first time in his life, I thought, Jimmy had been a 
craven. He had been afraid to tell Susan of an event 
which he must know would be like a knife in her heart. 

4 4 1 suppose I ’m foolishly hurt about it, ” I mumbled. 

How bravely she was taking it all, in spite of her physical 
exhaustion! Poor child, poor child! But in God’s name 
what then was the meaning of my vision back there in the 
hotel room at Evian? Jimmy entering this room where I 
now sat, tiptoeing to this very bedside, stooping down and 
kissing Susan — and her hand lifted, overcoming an almost 
mortal weakness, to touch his hair. . . . 

“You mustn’t be hurt at all,” Susan gently rebuked me. 
“Jimmy kept his marriage a secret from us for a very 
Jimmy esque reason. There was nothing specially exciting 
or romantic about the courtship itself, though. Little 
Jeanne-Marie’s father — he was a notary of Soissons who 
had made a nice, comfy little fortune for those parts — died 
just before the war. So the Widow Aulard retired with 
Jeanne-Marie to a brand-spandy-new, very ugly little coun- 
try house — south of the Aisne, Ambo, not far from Sois- 
sons ; the canny old notary had just completed it as a haven 
for his declining years when he up and died. Well then, 
during the first German rush, Widow Aulard — being a good 
extra-stubborn bourgeoise — refused to leave her home — re- 
fused, Jeanne-Marie told Jimmy, even to believe the Boches 
would ever really be permitted to come so far. That was 
foolish, of course — but doesn’t it make you like her, and 
see her — mustache and all ? 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


255 


1 But the deluge was too much, even for her. One morn- 
ing, after a night of terror, she found herself compulsory 
housekeeper, and little Jeanne-Marie compulsory servant, 
to a kennel of Bavarian officers. Then, three weeks or so 
later, the orderly of one of these officers, an Alsatian, was 
discovered to be a spy and was shot — and the Widow 
Aulard was shot, too, for having unwittingly harbored him. 
Jeanne-Marie wasn’t shot, though; the kennel liked her 
cooking. So, like the true daughter of a French notary, 
she used her wits, made herself indispensable to the comfort 
of the officers, preserved her dignity under incredible 
insults, and her virtue under conditions I needn’t tell you 
about, Ambo — and bided her time. 

“It nearly killed her; but she lived through it, and 
finally the French returned and helped her patch up and 
clean up what was left of the kennel. And a month or so 
later Jimmy’s esquadrille made Jeanne-Marie’s battered 
little house their headquarters and treated its mistress like 
the staunch little heroine she is. Of course, Jimmy wasn’t 
attached to the esquadrille then ; it was more than a year 
later that he arrived on the scene; but it didn’t take him 
long after getting there to decide on an international 
alliance. Bless him ! he says Jeanne-Marie isn’t very pretty, 
he guesses; she’s just — wonderful! She couldn’t make up 
her mind to the international alliance, though. She loved 
Jimmy, but the match didn’t strike her as prudent. An 
orphan must consider these things. Her property had been 
swept away, and Jimmy admitted he had nothing. And 
being her father’s daughter, Jeanne-Marie very wisely 
pointed out that he was in hourly peril of being killed or 
crippled for life. To marry under such circumstances 
would be to make her father turn in his grave. How can 
anything so sad be so funny, Ambo? Well, anyway, Jimmy, 
being Jimmy, saw the point, agreed with her completely, 
and seems to have felt thoroughly ashamed of himself for 
trying to persuade her into so crazy a match ! 

“Then little Jeanne-Marie came down with typhoid; her 
life was despaired of, a priest was summoned. In the pres- 


256 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


ence of death, she managed to tell the priest that it would 
seem less lonely and terrible to her if she could meet it as 
the wife ‘M’sieu Jee-mee.’ So the good priest managed 
somehow to slash through yards of official red tape in no 
time — you know how hard it is to get married in France, 
Ambo! — and the sacrament of marriage preceded the last 
rites; and then, dear, Jeanne-Marie faced the Valley of 
Shadow clinging to M’sieu Jee-mee ’s hand. The whole 
esquadrille was unstrung — naturally; even their famous 
ace, Boisrobert. Jimmy says he absolutely refused to fly 
for three days.” Tears were pouring from Susan’s eyes. 

‘ ‘ Oh, what a fool I am ! ’ ’ she protested, mopping at them 
with a corner of the top sheet. “She didn’t die, of course. 
She rallied at the last moment and got well — and found 
herself safely married after all, and quite ready to take 
her chances of living happily with M’sieu Jee-mee ever 
afterward ! There — isn ’t that a nice story, Ambo ? Don ’t 
you like pretty-pie fairy tales when they happen to be 
true ? ’ ’ 

That she could ask me this with her heart breaking! 
Again I could not trust myself to speak calmly ; and I saw 
that she was worn out with the effort she had made to over- 
come her weakness, and what I believed to be a living pain 
in her breast. I rose. 

“Ambo!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, “still you don’t ask 
me why Jimmy didn’t tell us! How stupid of you to take 
it all like this ! ’ ’ 

“I’ve stayed too long, dear,” I mumbled; “far too long. 
I’ve let you talk too much. Why, it’s almost dark! To- 
morrow ” 

“No, now,” she insisted, with a little frown of displeas- 
ure. “I won’t have you thinking meanly of Jimmy! It’s 
too absurdly unfair! I’m ashamed of you, Ambo.” 

How she idealized him! How she had always idealized 
that normal, likable, essentially commonplace Irish boy — 
pouring out, wasting for him treasures of unswerving 
loyalty ! It was damnable. But these things were the final 
mysteries of life, these instinctive bonds, yielding no clue to 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


257 


reason. One could only accept them, bitterly, with a curse 
or a groan withheld. Accept them — since one must. . . . 

“Well, dear,” broke from me with a touch, almost, of 
impatience, “I confess I’m more interested in your health 
than in Jimmy’s psychology! But I see you won’t sleep 
a wink if you don ’t tell me!” 

“I’ve never known you to be so horrid,” she said faintly, 
all the weariness of body and soul returning upon her for a 
moment, till she fought it back. She did so, to my amaze- 
ment, with an entirely unexpected chuckle, a true sharp, 
clear Birch Street gleam. “You don’t deserve it, Ambo, 
but I ’m going to make you smile a little, whether you feel 
like it or not! The reason Jimmy didn’t tell us was be- 
cause — after J eanne-Marie got well — he spent weeks trying 
to persuade her that a marriage made exclusively for 
eternity oughtn’t to be considered binding on this side! 
She had been entirely certain, he kept pointing out to her, 
that she ought not to marry him in this world, and she 
had only done so when she thought she was being taken 
from it.” Susan chuckled again. “Can’t you hear him, 
Ambo — and her? Jimmy, feeling he had won something 
precious through an unfair advantage and so refusing his 
good fortune — or trying to; and practical Jeanne-Marie 
simply nonplussed by his sudden lack of all common sense ! 
Besides which, wasn’t marriage a sacrament, and wasn’t 
M’sieu Jee-mee a good Catholic? Was he going back on his 
faith — or asking her to trifle with hers? And, anyway, 
they were married — that was the end of it ! And of course, 
Ambo, it was — really. There! I knew sooner or later 
you’d have to smile!” 

“Did he give in gracefully?” I asked. 

“Oh, things soon settled themselves, I imagine, when 
Jeanne-Marie was well enough to leave. Naturally, she 
had to as soon as she could. A soldier’s wife can’t live with 
him at the Front, you know — even to keep house for his 
esquadrille. She ’s living here now, in Paris, with a distant 
cousin, an old lady who runs a tiny shop near St.-Sulpice — 
sells pious pamphlets and pink-and-blue plaster Virgins — 


258 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


you know the sort of thing, Ambo. Yon must call on her 
at once in due form, dear. You must. I’m so eager to — 
when I can.” She paused on a breath, then added slowly, 
her eyes closing, ‘‘The baby’s expected in February — 
Jimmy’s baby.” 

The look on her face had puzzled me as I left her; a 
look of quiet happiness, I must have said — if I had not 
known. * 

And my vision at Evian ? 

I walked back toward the barrier down endless darken- 
ing avenues of suburban Neuilly; walked by instinct, 
though quite unconscious of direction, straight to the Porte 
Maillot, through the emotional nightmare of what my old 
childhood nurse, Maggie, used always to call “a great state 
of mind. ’ ’ 

v 

And that night — it was, I think, the thirtieth of Jan- 
uary, or was it the thirty-first? — fifty or sixty Boche 
aeroplanes came by detached squadrons over Paris 
and, for the first time since the Zeppelins of 1916, 
dropped a shower of bombs on the agglomeration Par - 
isienne. It was an entirely successful raid, destructive of 
property and life ; for the German flyers in their powerful 
Gothas had caught Paris napping, impotently unprepared. 

I had dined that evening with an old acquaintance, doing 
six-months’ time, as it amused him to put it, with the pur- 
chasing department of the Red Cross ; a man who had long 
since turned the silver spoon he was born with to solid 
gold, and who could see no reason why, just because for 
the first time in his life he was giving something for noth- 
ing, he should deprive himself while doing so of the very 
high degree of creature comfort he had always enjoyed. He 
was stationed in Paris, and it was his invariable custom 
to dine sumptuously at one of the more expensive res- 
taurants. 

This odd combination of service and sybaritism was not 
much to my liking, seeming to indicate a curious lack of 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


259 


imaginative sympathy with the victims of that triumphing 
Misery he was enlisted to combat ; nevertheless, I had prop- 
erly appreciated my dinner. It is impossible not to appre- 
ciate a well-ordered dinner, chez Durant, where wartime 
limitations seemed never to weigh very heavily upon 
the delicately imagined good cheer. True, the cost of 
this good cheer was fantastic, and I shuddered a little 
as certain memories of refugee hordes at Evian intruded 
themselves between our golden mouthfuls ; but the 
bouquet of a fine mellowed Burgundy was in my nos- 
trils and soon proved anaesthetic to conscience. And 
Arthur Dalton is a good table companion; his easy flow 
of conversation quite as mellow often as the wine he knows 
so well how to select. But that night, though I did my 
poor best to emulate him, I fear he did not find an equal 
combination of the soothing and the stimulating in me. 

Perhaps it was because I had bored him that I was 
destined before we parted to catch a rather startling 
glimpse of a new Arthur Dalton, new at least to me ; a per- 
son wholly different from the amusing man of the world I 
had long, but so casually, known. 

1 1 Hunt,” he said unexpectedly, over a final glass of old 
yellow Chartreuse, a liquor almost unobtainable at any 
price, “you’ve changed a lot since our days here together.” 
We had seen something of each other once in Paris, years 
before, during a fine month of spring weather; it was the 
year after my wife had left me. “A lot,” he repeated; 
“and I wish I could say for the better. You’ve aged, man, 
before you’re old. You’ve let life, somehow, get on your 
nerves, depress you. Suffered your genial spirits to rot, 
as the poet says. That’s foolish. It’s a kind of defeat — 
acceptance of defeat. Now my philosophy is always to stay 
on top — where the cream lies. Somebody’s going to get it 
if you and I don’t, eh? Well, I’m having my share. I 
don’t want more and I’m damned if I’ll take less. Any- 
thing wrong with that point of view, old man? I’d be 
willing to swear it used to be yours!” 

“Never quite, I think,” was my answer; “at least I 


260 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


never formulated it that way. I took things pretty easily 
as they came, Dalt, and didn’t worry about reasons. I’ve 
never been a philosophical person, never lived up to any 
consciously organized plan. If I had any God in those 
days I suppose I named him ‘ Culture ’ ; or worse still ‘ Good 
Taste.’ Not much of a god for these times,” I added. 

‘ 4 Oh, I don ’t know, ’ ’ Dalton struck in ; ‘ ‘ I ’m not so sure 
of that ! I can ’t see that these times differ much from any 
others. There’s a big war on, yes; but that’s nothing 
new, is it? Looks to me pretty much like the same old 
planet, right now. Never was much of a planet for the 
great majority; never will be. A few of us get all the 
prizes — always have. Some of us partly deserve ’em, but 
most of us just happen to be lucky. I don’t see anything 
that’s likely to change that arrangement. Do you?” 

“They’ve changed it in Russia,” I suggested. 

“Not a bit!” exclaimed Dalton. “Some different people 
have taken their big chance and climbed on top, that’s all! 
I doubt if they stay there long ; still, they may. That fel- 
low Lenine, now; he has a kind of well-up-in-the-saddle 
feel to him. Quite a boy, I’ve no doubt; and if he sticks, 
I congratulate him! It’s the one really amusing place to 
be.” 

“You sound like a Junker war-lord,” I smiled. “For- 
tunately, I know your bark, and I’ve never seen you bite.” 

“My dear Hunt,” said Dalton, lowering his voice, “my 
teeth are perfectly sound, I assure you; and I’ve always 
used ’em when I had to, believe me. It’s the law of life, a^ 
I read it. And just here between ourselves, eh — cutting outi 
all the nonsense we’ve learned to babble — do you see any 
difference between a Junker war-lord and a British Tory 
peer — or an American capitalist? Any real difference, I 
mean? I’m all for licking Germany if we can, because if 
we don’t she’ll control the cream supply of the world. But 
I can ’t blame her for wanting to, and if she gets away with 
it — which the devil forbid! — we’ll all mighty soon forget 
all the nasty things we’ve been saying about her and begin 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


261 


trying to lick her Prussian boots instead of her armies! 
That’s so, and you know it! Why, the most sickening 
thing about this war, Hunt, isn’t the loss of life — that may 
be a benefit to us all in the end; no sir, it’s the moral bun- 
combe it’s let loose! That man Wilson simply sweats the 
stuff day and night, drenches us with it — till we stink like 
a church of Easter lilies. Come now ! Doesn ’t it all, way 
down in your tummy somewhere, give you a good honest 
griping pain?” 

I stared at him. Yes; the man was evidently in earnest; 
was even, I could see, expecting me to smile — however 
deprecatingly, for form ’s sake — and in the main agree with 
him, as became my situation in life ; my class. I had sup- 
posed myself incapable of moral shock, but found now that 
the sincerity of his cynicism had unquestionably shocked 
me ; I felt suddenly embarrassed, awkward, ashamed. 

“Dalt,” I finally managed, pretty lamely, “it’s absurd, 
I admit ; but if I try to answer you, I shall lose my temper. 
I mean it. And as I ’ve dined wonderfully at your expense, 
that ’s something I don ’t care to do. ’ ’ 

It was his turn to stare at me. 

“Do you mean to say, Hunt, you ’ve been caught by all 
this sentimental parson’s palaver? Brotherhood, peace on 
earth, all the rest of it?” 

My nerves snapped. “If you insist on a straight an- 
swer,” I said, “you can have it: I’ve no use for a world 
that spiritually starves its poets and saints, and physically 
fattens its hyenas and hogs ! And if that isn ’t sentimental 
enough for you, I can go farther ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, that’ll do,” he laughed, uncomfortably however. 
“I’m always forgetting you’re a scribbler, of sorts. You 
scribblers are all alike — emotionally diseased. If you’d 
only stick to your real job of amusing the rest of us, it 
wouldn’t matter. It’s when you try to reform us that I 
draw the line ; have to. I can ’t afford to grow brainsick — 
abnormal. Well, ’ ’ he added, pushing back his chair, ‘ ‘ come 
along anyway! We’ve just time to get over to the Casino 


262 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and have a look at the only Gaby. Been there? It’s a 
cheap show, after Broadway, but it does well enough to 
pass the time. ’ ’ 

From this unalluring suggestion I begged off, justly 
pleading a hard day of work ahead. 4 ‘ And if you don’t 
mind, Dalt, I’ll walk home.” 

“Oh, all right,” he agreed; “I’ll walk along with you, 
if you’ll take it easy. I’m not much for exercise, you 
know. But it’s a perfect night.” 

I had hoped ardently to be rid of him, but I managed to 
accept his company with apparent good grace, and we 
strolled down the Avenue Victor Hugo toward the Tri- 
umphal Arch, bathed now in clearest moonlight, standing 
forth to all Paris as a cruelly ironic symbol of Hope, never 
relinquished, but endlessly deferred. Turning there, the 
Champs-Elysees, all but deserted at that hour in wartime 
Paris, stretched on before us down a gentle slope, half 
dusky, half glimmering, and wholly silent except for our 
lonesome-sounding footfalls and the distant faint plopping 
of a lame cab-horse’s stumbling heels. 

“Not much like the old town we knew once, eh, Hunt?” 
asked Dalton. 

But conversation soon faded out between us, as we made 
our way through etched mysteries of black and silver under 
thick-set leafless branches. An occasional light beckoned us 
from far ahead down our pavement vista; for Paris had 
not yet fully become that city — not of dreadful — but of 
majestic and beautiful night we were later to know, and 
to love with so changed and grave a passion. 

It was just after we had crossed the Rond-Point that the 
first seven or eight bombs in swift even succession shat- 
teringly fell. They were not near enough to us to do more 
than root us to the spot with amazement, 

“What the hell V' muttered Dalton, holding my 
eyes. . . . 

Then, very far off, a curious thin wailing noise began, 
increasing rapidly, rising to an eerie scream which dou- 
bled and redoubled in volume as it was taken up in other 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


263 


quarters and came to us in intricately rhythmic waves. 

“Sirens,” said Dalton. “The pompiers are out. I guess 
they've come, damn them, eh?” 

“Seems so,” I answered. “Yes; there go the lights. 
I must get to Neuilly at once— a sick friend. So long, old 
man.” 

“Hold on!” he called after me. “Don’t be an ass!” 

To my impatient annoyance, for they impeded my prog- 
ress, knots of people had sprung everywhere from the dark- 
ness and were standing now in open spots, in the full 
moonlight, murmuring together, as they stared with back- 
ward-craned necks up into the spotless sky. . . . 

So, with crashing, sinister, unresolved chords, began the 
Straussian overture to the great Boche symphony, Gott 
Strafe Paris , played to its impotent conclusion throughout 
those bitter spring months of the year of our wonderment, 
1918! Ninety-one bombs were dropped that night within 
the old fortifications; more than two hundred were 
showered on the banlieue. No subsequent raid was to prove 
equally destructive of property or life, and it was disturb- 
ingly evident that, for the time being at least, the shadowy 
air lanes to Paris lay broadly open to the foe. 

Yet, for some reason unexplained, the Gothas did not 
immediately or soon return. Followed a hush of rather 
more than a month, during which Paris worked breathlessly 
to improve its air defenses and protect its more precious 
monuments. Comically ugly little sausage-balloons — gorged 
caterpillars, they seemed, raw yellow with pale green 
articulations and loathsome, floppy appendages — were 
moored in the squares and public gardens; mountains of 
sand bags were heaped about the Triumphal Arch and 
before the portals of Notre Dame; spies were hunted out, 
proclamations issued, the entrance ways to deep cellars 
were placarded ; and Night, that long-exiled princess, came 
back to us, royally, in full mourning robes. In her honor 
all windows were doubly curtained, all street lamps ex- 
tinguished, or dimmed with paint to a heavy blue. We 


264 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


invoked the august amplitude of darkness and would gladly 
have banished the trivial prying moon, seeing her at last in 
true colors for the sinister corpse light of heaven which she 
is. No one, I think, was deceived by this lengthening 
interval of calm. Why the Gothas did not at once return, 
what restrained them from following up their easy 
triumph, we could not guess; but we knew they would 
come again, would come many times. .‘ . . 

Meanwhile, for most of us who dwelt there, life went 
on as before, busily enough ; but for one of us — as for how 
many another — this no longer mattered. 

Brave little Jeanne-Marie Valerie Josephine Aulard, on 
that night of anguish, died in giving premature birth to 
Jimmy’s son, James Aulard Kane — as Susan later named 
him: for this wizened, unready morsel of man’s flesh, in 
spite of every disadvantage attending his debut and first 
motherless weeks on earth, clung with the characteristic 
tenacity of his parents to his one obvious line of duty, 
which was merely to keep alive in despite of fortune: a 
duty he somehow finally accomplished to his own entire 
satisfaction and to the blessed relief of Susan and of me. 
But I shall never forget my first pitiful introduction to 
James Aulard Kane. 

After leaving Dalton, that night, I had finally made my 
way to Susan’s hospital on foot, which I had soon found 
to be the one practicable means of locomotion. It was a 
long walk, and it brought me in due course into the Avenue 
de la Grande Armee, just in time to receive the full stam- 
peding effect of the three bombs which fell there, the near- 
est of them not four hundred yards distant from me. I am 
by no means instinctively intrepid; quite the contrary; I 
shy like a skittish horse in the presence of danger, and my 
first authentic impulse is always to cut and run. On this 
occasion, by the time I had mastered this impulse, I had 
placed a good six hundred yards between me and that ill- 
fated building, whose stone-faced upper floors had been 
riven and hurled down to the broad avenue below. Then, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 265 

shamefacedly enough, I turned and forced myself back 
toward that smoking ruin. 

Our American ambulances from Neuilly were already 
arriving — the pompiers came later — and the police lines 
were being drawn. A civilian spectator, even though a 
captain of the Red Cross, could render no real assistance ; 
so much, after certain futile efforts on my part, was made 
clear to me, profanely, in a Middle Western accent, by a 
young stretcher-bearer whose course I had clumsily im- 
peded. Clouds of lung-choking dust, milk-white as the 
moon’s full rays played upon them, rolled over us — the 
subdued crowd that gathered slowly, oblivious of further 
danger. The air was full of whispered rumor — throughout 
Paris hundreds — thousands, said some — had already died. 
We were keyed to believe the wildest exaggerations, to 
accept the worst that excited imaginations could invent for 
us. Yet there was no panic; no one gave way to hysterical 
outcry ; and the fall of more distant bombs brought only a 
deep common groan, compounded of growling imprecations 
— a groan truly of defiance and loathing, into which neither 
fear nor pity for the victims of this frightfulness could 
find room to enter. I cursed with the rest, instinctively, 
from the pit of my stomach, and turned raging away ; my 
whole being ached, was congested with rage. For the first 
time in my life I then felt in its full hell-born fury that 
passion so often named, but so seldom experienced by 
civilized — or what we call civilized — man: the passion of 
hate. 

By the time I had reached the hospital the raid was over ; 
the air was droning from the bronze vibrations of hundreds 
of bells, all the church-bells of Paris, full-throated, calling 
forth their immediate surface messages of cheer, their 
deeper message of courage and constancy. 

Though it was very late, I found a silent group of four 
nurses standing in the heavily shadowed street before the 
shut doors of this small civilian hospital; they were still 
staring up fixedly at the silver-bright sky. They proved 


266 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


to be day-nurses off duty, and among them was Mademoi- 
selle Annette. She greeted me now as an old friend, and 
brushing rules and regulations aside like a true French- 
woman took me at once to Susan. I found that Susan had 
risen from bed and was seated at her window, which looked 
out across the winter-bare hospital garden. 

“Ambo,” she exclaimed impatiently? “why did you come 
here! I’m so used to all this. But Jeanne-Marie, Ambo — 
in her condition! I’ve been hoping so you would think 
of her — go to her ! ’ ’ 

Then what fatuous devil — was it my old familiar demon ? 
— put it into my heart to say: “So you haven’t been 
worrying, dear, about me?” 

“About you!” she cried. “Good God, no! What does 
it matter about you — or me! This generation’s done for, 
Ambo. Only the children count now — the children. We 
must save them — all of them — somehow. It’s up to them — 
to Jimmy’s son with the rest! They’ve got to wipe us out, 
clear the slate of us and all our insanities! They’ve got 
to pass over the wreck of us and rebuild a happy, intel- 
ligible world!” 

She rose, seized my arm, and summoning all her strength 
thrust me from her toward the door. . . . 

VI 

It was well on toward three o ’clock in the morning when 
at last I stood before the black, close-shuttered shop-front 
of the Yve. Guyot. I was desperately weary, having of 
necessity walked all the way. It was, as I had fully realized 
while almost stumbling along toward my goal, a crazy 
errand. I should find a dark, silent house, and I should 
then stumble back through dark, silent streets to my dark, 
silent hotel. The shop of the Widow Guyot was a very 
little shop on a very narrow street, a mere slit between 
high, ancient buildings — a slit filled now with the dense 
river-mist that shrouds from the experience of Parisians 
all the renewing wonders of clear-eyed dawn. The moon 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 


267 


had set, or else hung too veiled and low for this pestilent 
alley ; in spite of a thick military overcoat I shivered with 
cold; the flat, sour smell of ill-flushed gutters caught at 
my throat. To this abomination of desolation I had, with 
no little difficulty, found my way. Thank God I could 
turn now, with a good conscience, and fumble back to the 
warm oblivion of bed. 

I paused a moment, however, to draw up the collar of 
my overcoat to my ears and fasten it securely ; and, doing 
so, I was aware of the scrape and clink of metal on metal ; 
then the shop-door right before me was shaken and jarred 
open from within. The fluttering rays of a candle, tremu- 
lously held, surprised and for an instant blinded me; 
faintly luminous green and red balloons wheeled swiftly 
in contracting circles, then coalesced to a flickering point 
of light. The candle was held by an old, stout woman with 
a loose- jowled, bruised-looking face ; a face somehow sensual 
and hard in spite of its bloated antiquity. A shrunken, 
thin-bearded man in a long black coat stood beside her, 
holding a black hand-bag. The two were conversing in 
tones deliberately muted, but broke off and stared outward 
as the candle-light discovered me in the narrow street. 

“Ah, M’sieu, one sees, is American; he has perhaps lost 
his way?” piped the thin-bearded man, pretty sharply. 
He, too, was old. 

“But no,” I replied; “I am here precisely on behalf of 
my friend, Lieutenant Kane.” 

At this name the old woman began, only to check, a 
half-startled squawk, lifting her candle as she did so and 
peering more intently at me. “At this hour, m’sieu?” she 
demanded huskily. “What could bring you at such an 
hour ? ’ ’ 

“Do I address the Widow Guyot?” I was quick to 
respond. 

“Oui, m’sieu .” 

“Then, permit me to explain.” As briefly as possible 
I told her who I was; that I had but very recently learned 
of the presence of Jimmy’s wife in Paris, with a relative— 


268 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


learned that she was awaiting the birth of her first child 
at the house of this excellent woman. “It was my inten- 
tion to call soon, madame, in any case, and make myself 
known — feeling there might prove to be many little serv- 
ices a friend would be only too happy to render. But, 
after this terrible raid, I found it impossible to retire with 
an easy mind — at least, until I had assured myself that 
all was well with you here. ’ ’ 

On this there came a pause, and the thin-bearded man 
cleared his throat diligently several times. 

“The truth is, m’sieu,” he finally hazarded, “that your 
apprehension was only too just. You arrive at a house of 
mourning, m’sieu. You arrive, as I did, alas — too late! 
This poor Madame Kane you would inquire for is dead. 
The child, on the contrary, still lives.’ ’ 

“Enter, m’sieu,” said the Widow Guyot. “We can dis- 
cuss these things more commodiously within. Doubtless, 
otherwise, we shall receive attentions from the police ; they 
are nervous to-night. Naturally.” She seemed, I thought 
— in the utter blank depression which had seized me with 
the doctor’s words — offensively calm. Whether, had a 
doctor been more quickly obtainable, or a more skillful 
practitioner at last obtained, little Jeanne-Marie’s life 
might have been spared, I am unable to say. I feel certain, 
however, that the Widow Guyot — under difficult, not to 
say terrifying circumstances — had kept a cool head, done 
her best. I exonerate her from all blame. But I add this : 
Never in my life have I met elsewhere a woman who seemed 
to me to possess such cold-blooded possibilities for evil. 
Yet, so far as I know to this hour, her life has always been 
and now continues industrious and thrifty ; harmless before 
the law. I have absolutely “nothing on her” — nothing but 
an impression I shall never be rid of, which even now 
returns to chill me in nights of insomnia : a sense of having 
met in life one woman whose eyes may now and then have 
watered from dust or wind, but could never under any 
circumstances conceivably human have known tears. Other 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


269 


women, too many of them, have bored or exasperated me 
with maudlin or trivial tears; but never before or since 
have I met a woman who could not w T eep. It is a fixed 
idea with me that the Widow Guyot could not; and the 
idea haunts and troubles me strangely — though why it 
should, I am too casual a psychologist even to guess. 

At her heels, I crossed a small cluttered shop, following 
the tremulous flame of the candle through a fantastic 
shadow dance ; Doctor Pollain — who had given me his name 
with the deprecating cough of one who knows himself 
either unpleasantly notorious or hopelessly obscure — shuf- 
fled behind us. Madame Guyot opened an inner door. 
Light from the room beyond tempered a little the vague- 
ness about me and ghostily revealed a huddle of eccle- 
siastical trumpery — rows of thin, pale-yellow tapers; small 
crucifixes of plaster or base-metal gilded ; a stand of picture 
post-cards; a table littered with lesser gimcracks. The 
direct rays from Madame Guyot ’s candle, as she turned a 
moment in the doorway, wanly illuminated the blue-coiffed, 
vapid face of a bisque Virgin ; gave for that instant a half- 
flicker, as of just-stirring life, to her mannered, meaning- 
less smile. 

The room beyond proved to be a good-sized bedroom, 
its one window muffled by heavy stuff-curtains of a dull 
magenta red. A choking, composite odor — I detected 
the sick pungency of chloroform — emerged from it. I 
plunged to enter, and for a second instinctively held my 
breath. On the great walnut double-bed lay a still figure 
covered with a sheet ; the proper candles twinkled at head 
and foot. But it is needless to describe these things. . . . 

It was in a smaller room beyond, a combined living- 
and-dining room, stodgily ugly, but comfortable enough as 
well, that I first made the acquaintance of James Aulard 
Kane. What I saw was a great roll of blankets in a deep 
boxlike cradle, and in the depths of a deeply dented feather 
pillow a tiny, wrinkled monkey-face, a miniature grotesque. 
The small knife-slit that served him for mouth opened and 


270 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


shut slowly and continuously, as if feebly gasping for diffi- 
cult breath. He gave not even one faint encouraging cry. 
I turned to Doctor Pollain, shaking my head. 

“But no!” he exclaimed. “For an eight-months child, 
look you — he has vigor ! I am sure he will live. ’ ’ 

“Then, for his father’s sake,” I replied, “we must take 
no chances ! Isn ’t there a maternity hospital in the neigh- 
borhood where he can receive the clSse attention that you, 
madame, at your age, with your responsibilities, ought not 
to be expected to give? I make myself fully responsible 
for any and all charges involved. Understand me, madame, 
and you, M. le Medecin, I insist that no stone shall be left 
unturned ! ’ ’ 

These words produced, at once, a grateful change in the 
atmosphere — hitherto, I had felt, ever so slightly hostile. 
It is unnecessary to follow our further negotiations to their 
entirely amicable close. Half an hour later I left the shop 
of the Widow Guyot, satisfied that Doctor Pollain would 
assist her to make all needful arrangements, and promising 
to get into communication as soon as it could be managed 
with “ M. J ee-mee. ’ ’ I should return, I told them, certainly, 
before noon. 

But for Jimmy’s sake, on leaving, I raised a corner of 
the sheet covering the face of Jeanne-Marie. It was a 
peaceful face. If she had lately suffered, death now had 
quietly smoothed from her all but a lasting restfulness. 
A good little woman, I mused, of the best type provincial 
France offers; sensible, yet ardent; practical, yet kind. 
As I looked down at her, the meaningless smile of the 
bisque Madonna in the shop without returned to me, sim- 
pered for a half-second before me. . . . The symbols men 
made — and sold — commercial symbols ! The Mother of Sor- 
rows, a Chinese toy! Well. . . . 

“One thing troubles me,” said the Widow Guyot at my 
elbow, in her husky, passionless voice : ‘ ‘ She did not receive 
the last rites, m’sieu. When the bad furn came, it was 
not possible for us to leave her. You will understand that. 
There was a new life, was there not? Assuredly, though, 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


271 


I am troubled ; I regret that this should have happened to 
me. It will be a great cause for scandal, m ’sieu — when you 
consider my connections — the nature of my little affairs. 
But, name of God, that will pass ; one explains these things 
with a certain success, and my age favors me. I bear, God 
be praised, a good name; and in the proper quarters, 
m’sieu. But — the poor little one! Observe m’sieu, that 
she clasps a crucifix on her breast. Be so good as to 
remember that I placed it in her hands — an instant before 
she died.” 


VII 

It is an artistic fault in real life that it deals so fre- 
quently in coincidence, to the casting of suspicion upon 
those who report it veraciously. On the very night that 
J eanne-Marie died, probably within the very hour that she 
died, Jimmy was shot down, while taking part in a bombing 
expedition; the plane he was conducting was seen, by 
crews of the two other bombing-plans in the formation, to 
burst into flames after a direct hit from an anti-aircraft 
battery, which had been firing persistently, though neces- 
sarily at haphazard, up toward the bumble-bee hum of 
French motors — so betrayingly unlike the irregular gut- 
tural growl of the German machines. 

Throughout the following morning I had been attempt- 
ing, with the indispensable aid of my old friend, Colonel 
, of the French war office, to get into telegraphic com- 
munication with the commander of Jimmy’s esquadrille ; 
6ut it was noon, or very nearly, before this unexpected 
word came to us. And when it came, I found myself unable 
to believe it. 

In the very spirit of Assessor Brack, “Things, don’t 
happen like that!” I kept insisting. “It’s too improbable. 
I must wait for further verification. We shall see, colonel, 
there’s been an error in names; some mistake.” I was 
stubborn about it. Simply, for Susan’s sake, I could not 
admit the possibility that Jimmy was dead. 

During the midday pause I hurriedly made my way to 


272 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


the Widow Guyot ’s little shop. The baby had already 
been taken to the Hospice de la Maternite — the old Con- 
vent of Port Royal, near the cemetery of Montparnasse. 
He had stood the trip well, Madame Guyot assured me, 
and would undoubtedly win through to a ripe old age. A 
priest was present. I told Madame Guyot to arrange with 
him for a proper funeral and interment for Jeanne-Marie, 
and was at once informed that the skilled assistants of a 
local director of pompes funebres were even then at work, 
embalming her mortal remains. 

“So much, at least, m’sieu,” said Madame Guyot, “I 
knew her husband would desire ; and I relied on your sug- 
gestion that no expense need be spared. I have stipulated 
for a funeral of the first class’ ’ — a specific thing in France ; 
so many carriages with black horses, so many plumes of 
such a quality, and so on — “it only remains to acquire a 
site for the poor little one’s grave. This, too, M’sieu le 
Capitaine, you may safely leave to my discretion ; but we 
must together fix on a day and hour for the ceremonies. 
Is it yet known when this poor Lieutenant Kane will 
arrive in Paris?” 

No, it was not yet known ; I should be able to inform her, 
I hazarded, before nightfall; and I thanked her for the 
pains she was taking, and again assured her that the finan- 
cial question was of no importance. As I said this, the 
priest, a dry wisp of manhood, softly drew nearer and 
slightly moistened his thin-set lips; but he did not speak. 
Possibly Madame Guyot spoke for him. 

“At such times, m’sieu,” she replied, “one does what 
one can. But naturally — that is understood. One is not 
an only relative for nothing, m’sieu. The heart speaks. 
True, I have hitherto been put to certain expenses for 
which the poor little one had promised to reimburse 


I hastened to assure her that she had only to present 
this account to me in full, and we parted with mutual 
though secret contempt, and with every sanctified expres- 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 273 

sion of esteem. Then I returned to the cabinet of my 
friend, Colonel . 

By three o’clock in the afternoon a brief telegram from 
Jimmy’s commander was brought to us; it removed every 
possibility of doubt, even from my obdurate mind. Jimmy 
had “gone West” once for all, and this time “West” was 
not even a geographical expression. ... I sat silent for 
perhaps five slowly passing minutes in the presence of 

Colonel , until I was aware of a somewhat amazed 

scrutiny from tired, heavily pouched blue eyes. 

“You feel this deeply,” he observed, “and I — I feel 
nothing, except a vague sympathy for you, mon ami. 
Accept, without phrases, I beg you, all that a sad old man 
has left to give. ’ ’ 

I rose, thanked him warmly for the trouble he had taken 
on my behalf, and left him to his endless, disheartening 
labors. France -was in danger; he knew that France was 
in danger. What to him, in those days, was one young 
life more or less? He himself had lost three sons in the 
war. . . . 

But how was I to let fall this one blow more, this 
heaviest blow of all, upon Susan ? It was that which had 
held me silent in my chair, inhibiting all will to rise and 
begin the next needful step. Yes, it was that; I was think- 
ing of Susan, not of Jimmy. For me in those days, I fear, 
the world consisted of Susan, and of certain negligible 
phantoms — the remainder of the human race. It is not an 
etat d’ame that Susan admires, or that I much admire; 
but in those days it was certainly mine. And this is the 
worst of a lonely passion: the more one loves in secret, 
without fulfillment — and however unselfishly — the more 
one excludes. Life contracts to a vivid, hypnotizing point ; 
all else is shadow. In the name of our common humanity, 
there is a good deal to be said for those who are fickle or 
frankly pagan, who love more lightly, and more easily 
forget. But enough of all this! Phil with his steady 
wisdom might philosophize it to some purpose; not I. 


274 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


In my uncertainty of mind, then, the first step that I 
took was an absurdly false one. There was just one thing 
for me to do, and I did not do it. I should have gone 
straight to Susan and told her about Jimmy and Jeanne- 
Marie; above all, about James Aulard Kane. Even if 
Susan, as I then supposed, loved Jimmy, and had always 
loved him — knowing her as I did, "loving her as I did, I 
should have felt instinctively that this was the one wise 
and kind, the one possible thing to do. Yet a sudden weak- 
ness, born of innate cowardice, betrayed me. 

I went, instead, direct to the Hotel Crillon and sent up 
my card to Miss Leslie; it struck me as fortunate that I 
found her just returned to her rooms from a visit to Susan. 
It was really a calamity. I had seen her several times 
there, at the hospital ; I liked her ; and I knew that Susan 
had now no more devoted friend. She received me cor- 
dially, and I at once laid all the facts before her and — 
with an entirely sincere humbleness — asked her advice. 
But God, in the infinite variety of his creations, had never 
intended Mona Leslie to shine by reason of insight or 
common sense; she had other qualities! And this, too, I 
should easily have discerned. Why I did not, can only 
be explained by a sort of prostration of all my faculties, 
which had come upon me with the events of the night and 
morning just past. I was inert, body and soul; I could 
not think; I felt like a child in the sweep of dark forces 
it cannot struggle against and does not understand; in 
effect, I was for the time being a stricken, credulous child. 
Perhaps no grown man, not definitely insane, has ever 
touched a lower stratum of spiritual debility than I then 
sank to — resting there, grateful, fatuously content, as if on 
firm ground. In short, I was a plain and self-damned fool. 

It seemed to me, I remember, during our hour’s talk 
together, that Miss Leslie was one of the two or three 
wisest, most understanding, and sympathetic persons I had 
ever met. Sympathetic, she genuinely was; very gracious 
and interestingly melancholy, in her Belgian nurse’s cos- 
tume, with King Albert ’s decoration pinned to her breast. 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


275 


It seemed to me that she divined my thoughts before I 
uttered them ; as perhaps she did — for to call them thoughts 
is to dignify vague sensations with a misleading name. 
Miss Leslie had had always, I am now aware, an instinctive 
response for vague sensations; she had always vibrated to 
them like a harp, thus surrounding herself with an odd, 
whispering music. A strange woman ; not without nobility 
and force when the appropriate vague sensations played 
upon her. The sufferings of war had already wrung from 
her a wild, asolian masterpiece, more moving perha >s han 
a consciously ordered symphony. And Susan, though she 
had never so much as guessed at Susan, was one of her 
passions! Susan played on us both that day: though the 
mawkish music we made would have disgusted her — did 
disgust her in its final effects, as it has finally disgusted 
me. 

What these effects were can be briefly told, but not 
briefly enough to comfort me. There is no second page of 
this record I should be so happy not to write. 

Miss Leslie had long suspected, she told me, that Susan — 
like Viola’s hypothetical sister — was pining in thought 
for a secret, unkind lover, and she at once accepted as a 
certainty my suggestion that so gallant a young aviator 
as Jimmy had been what “glorious Jane” always calls her 
“object.” 

“This must be kept from her, Mr. Hunt, at all costs — 
for the next few weeks, I mean! She’s simply not strong 
enough yet, not poised enough, to bear it — with all the 
rest ! It would be cruelty to tell her now, and might prove 
murderous. Oh, believe me, Mr. Hunt — I know !” 

Her cocksure intensity could not fail to impress me in 
my present state of deadness; I listened as if to oracles. 
Then we conspired together. 

“My lease of the villa at Mentone runs on till May,” 
said Miss Leslie. “Susan’s physically able for the journey 
now, I think; we must take that risk anyway. I’ll get the 
doctors to order her down there with me, at once. She 
needs the change, the peace; above all — the beauty of it. 


276 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


She’s starved for beauty, poor soul! And there’s the pos- 
sibility of further raids, too ; she mustn ’t in her condition 
be exposed to that. When she’s stronger, Mr. Hunt — after 
she’s had a few happy weeks — then I’ll tell her everything, 
in my own way. Women can do these things, you know; 
they have an instinct for the right moment, the right 
words. ’ ’ 

4 ‘You are proving that now,” I said. Every word she had 
spoken was balm to me. Everything could be put off — put 
off. . . . To put things off indefinitely, hide them out of 
sight, dodge them somehow ! Why, she was voicing the one 
weary cry of my soul! 

And so, within three days, this supreme folly was accom- 
plished. Mona Leslie and I stole across the river in secret 
to little Jeanne-Marie’s meagerly attended “funeral of the 
first class,” and with Madame Guyot, Doctor Pollain, and 
a few casual neighbors, we followed her coffin from the 
vast drafty dreariness of St.-Sulpice to the wintry, crowded 
alleys of the cemetery of Montparnasse. — That very eve- 
ning Susan left with Miss Leslie for Mentone. 

She was glad enough to go, she said, for a week or two. 
“But Ambo — what shall I say to Jimmy? Will he ever 
forgive me for not having been able to make friends, first, 
with Jeanne-Marie? And it’s all your fault, dear; you 
must tell him that — say you’ve been downright cross with 
me about it. I wish now I hadn’t listened to you; I feel 
perfectly well to-night; I’ve no business to be starting on 
a holiday. But I shan’t stay long, Ambo. I’ll be back 
in Paris before little Jimmy arrives; I promise you that. 
And here’s a letter to post, dear; I’ve said so in it to 
J eanne-Marie. ’ ’ 

A dark train drew out of a dark station. With it went 
Hope, the shadow, silently, from my heart. . . . 

VIII 

The days passed. Mentone, Miss Leslie wrote me, was 
doing everything for Susan that we had desired. “But 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


277 


she is determined,” she added, “to be back in Paris by the 
last week of February — when the baby was expected. She 
begins to be bothered that you write so scrappily and 
vaguely, and that she hears nothing directly from Lieu- 
tenant Kane or Jeanne-Marie. I shall have to tell her soon 
now, in any case. It seems more difficult as I come nearer 
to it, but I still feel sure we have done the right thing. 
I ’m certain now that Susan will be able to face and bear it. 
Already she’s full of plans for the future — wonderful! 
Possibly, if an opportunity offers, I shall tell her to-night. ’ ’ 

The next afternoon my telephone rang. When I answered 
it, Susan spoke to me. “Ambo,” she said, “I’m at the 
France-et-Choiseul. Please come over at once, no matter 
how busy you are. You owe that much to me, I think.” 
She had hung up the receiver before I could stammer a 
reply. 

But nothing more was necessary. I went to her as a 
criminal goes to confession, knowing at last how hideously 
in her eyes I had sinned. 

“You meant well, Ambo,” she said with a gentleness 
that yielded nothing — “you and Mona. Meaning well’s 
what I feel now I can never quite forgive you. You, Ambo. 
Poor Mona doesn’t count in this. But you — I thought I 
was safe with you. No matter. ’ ’ 

Later she said : “ I ’ve seen Madame Guyot — a horrible 
woman; and the baby. He’s a nice baby. You did just 
right about him, Ambo. Thank you for that.” She mused 
a moment. “I suppose it’s absurd to think he looks like 
Jimmy? But to me he does. I’m going to adopt him, 
Ambo. You see” — her smile was wistful — “I am going to 
have a baby of my own, after all.” 

“I’d thought of adopting him, myself,” I babbled; “but 
of course ” 

“Of course,” said Susan. 

In so many subtle ways she had made it clear to me. I 
had disappointed her; revealed a blindness, a weakness, 
she would never be able to forget. In my hotel room that 
night I faced it out and accepted my punishment as just. 


278 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


Just — but terrible. . . . There is nothing in life so terrible 
as to know oneself utterly and finally alone. 

ix * 

On the night of the eighth of March the Goth as, so long 
expected, returned; to be met this time by a persistent 
barrage fire from massed 75’s, which proved, however, little 
more than the good beginnings of a really competent 
defense. Many bombs fell within the fortifications, and we 
who dwelt there needed no other proof that the problem 
of the defense of Paris against air raids had not yet suc- 
cessfully been solved. 

There were thickening rumors, too, of an imminent Ger- 
man attack in force. Things were not going well at the 
Front. It was common gossip that there was division 
among the Allies ; the British and French commands were 
pulling at cross purposes; Italy seemed impotent; Russia 
had collapsed; the Americans were unknown factors, and 
slow to arrive. It began to seem possible — to the disaffected 
or naturally pessimistic, more than possible — that the Prus- 
sian mountebank might make good his anachronistic boast 
to wear down and conquer the world. 

Even the weather seemed to fight for his pinchbeck 
empire; it was continuously dry, and for the season in 
Northern France extraordinarily clear. By its painful 
contrast with our common anxieties, the unseasonable 
beauty of those March days and nights weighted as if with 
lead the sense of threat, of impending calamity, that 
pressed upon us and chilled us and made desperate our 
hearts. 

I saw Susan daily. She did not avoid me and was never 
unkind, but I felt that she took little comfort or pleasure 
from my society. Mona Leslie, rather huffed than chast- 
ened, I fear, by Susan’s quiet aloofness, had returned to 
her duties at Dunkirk. I was glad to have her go, to be 
rid of the embarrassment of her explanations and counsel — 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


279 


to be rid, above all, of the pointedly sympathetic and pity- 
ing pressure of her hand. Except for a slight limp, Susan 
now got about freely and was busily engaged with our Red 
Cross directors on plans for a nursing-home for the children 
of repatriated refugees — a home where these little victims 
of frightfulness and malnutrition could be built up again 
into happy soundness of body and mind, into the vigorous 
life-stuff needed for the future of France and of the world. 

A too-medieval chateau at , in Provence, had been 

offered; and plans for its immediate alteration and mod- 
ernization were being drawn. 

The whole thing, from the first, had been Susan’s idea, 
and she was to have charge of it all — once the required 
plant was ready — as became its creator. But indeed, in the 
interim, she had simply taken charge of our Red Cross 
architects and buyers and builders and engineers, and was 
sweeping things forward with a tactful but exceedingly 
high hand. She meant that the interim should be, if pos- 
sible, brief. 

“I want results,” said Susan; “we can discuss the rules 
we’ve broken afterward. The children are fading out now, 
and some of them will be dead or hopelessly withered before 
we can aid them. Let’s get some kind of home and get it 
running; with a couple of good doctors, an orthopedist, a 
dental expert, and the right nurses — and I’ll pick them , 
please! — we can make out somehow, ’most anywhere.” 

There was no standing against her. It was presently 
plain to all of us in the Paris headquarters that this nurs- 
ing home was to be put through in record time, Germans 
or no Germans, and no matter who fell by the wayside ! 
And, in spite of my natural anxiety, I was soon convinced 
that whoever fell, it would not be Susan — not, at least, 
till the clear flame of her spirit had burned out the oil of 
her energy to its last granted drop. 

In the rare intervals of these labors, she was arranging 
for the legal adoption of James Aulard Kane. No step of 
this kind is easily arranged in bureaucratic France. It is 


280 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


a difficult land to be legally born in or married in, or to 
die in — if one wishes to do these things, at least, with a 
certain decency, en regie. 

Susan complained to me of this, wittily scornful, as we 
left the Red Cross headquarters together on the evening 
of March eleventh, and started toward her hotel down the 
dusky colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli. 

‘‘I’m worn out with them all ! ” she exclaimed. ‘ ‘ All I 
want is to take care of Jimmy’s baby, and you’d think I 
was plotting to upset the government. I shall, too, if some 
of these French officials don’t presently exhibit more com- 
mon sense. It ought to be upset — and simplified. Oh, I 
wish I lived in a woman’s republic, Ambo! Things would 
happen there, even if they were wrong! No woman has 
patience enough to be bureaucratic.” 

“True,” I chimed; “and you’re right about men, all 
round. We’re hopeless incompetents at statecraft and such 
things, at running a reasonable world — but we can cook! 
And what you need for a change from all this is a good 
dinner — a real dinner! It will renew your faith in the 
eternal masculine — and we haven’t had a bat, Susan, or 
talked nonsense, for years and years! Come on, dear! 
Let’s have a perfectly shameless bat to-night and damn 
the consequences ! What do you say ? ’ ’ 

“I say — damn the consequences, Ambo! Let’s! Why, 
I’d forgotten there was such a thing as a bat left in the 
world ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ But there is ! Look — there’s even a taxi to begin on ! ” 

I hailed it; I even secured it; and we were presently 
clanking and grinding on our way — in what must have 
been an authentic relic from the First Battle of the Marne 
— toward the one restaurant in Paris. Unto each man, 
native or alien, who knows his Paris, God grants but one, 
though it is never the same. Well, I make no secret about 
it; my passion is deep and openly proclaimed. For me, 
the one restaurant in Paris is Laperouse ; I am long past 
discussing the claims of rivals. It is — simply and finally — 
Laperouse. . . . 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


281 


We descended before an ancient, dingy building on the 
Quai des Grands-Augustins, passed through a cramped 
doorway into a tiny, ill-lit foyer, climbed a steep narrow 
stairs, and were presently installed in a corner of the small 
corner dining-room, with our backs neighborly against the 
wall. In this room there happened that night to be but 
one other diner; a small, bloated, bullet-headed civilian, 
with prominent staring eyes; a man of uncertain age, but 
nearing fifty at a guess. We paid little attention to him 
at first, though it soon became evident to us that he was 
enjoying a Pantagruelian banquet in lonely state, deliber- 
ately gorging himself with the richest and most incongru- 
ously varied food. Comme boissons, he had always before 
him two bottles, one of Chateau Yquem and one of Fine 
Champagne ; and he alternated gulps of thick yellow sweet- 
ness with drams of neat brandy. Neither seemed to pro- 
duce upon him any perceptible effect, though he emitted 
from time to time moist porcine snufflings of fleshy satis- 
faction. Rather a disgusting little man, we decided; and 
so dismissed him. . . . 

To the ordering of our own dinner I gave a finicky care 
which greatly amused Susan, for whom food, I regret to 
say, has always remained an indifferent matter; it is the 
one aesthetic flaw in her otherwise so delicately organized 
being. In spite of every effort on my part to educate her 
palate, five or six nibbles at almost anything edible remains 
her idea of a banquet — provided the incidental talk prove 
sufficiently companionable or stimulating. 

That night, however, do what we would, our talk 
together was neither precisely the one nor the other. We 
both, rather desperately, I think, made a supreme effort 
to approximate the free affectionate chatter of old days; 
but such things never come of premeditation, and there 
were ghosts at the table with us. It would not work. 

4 ‘Oh, what’s the use, Ambo!” Susan finally exclaimed, 
with a weary sigh. “We can’t do it this way! Sister’s 
here, and Jeanne-Marie — as close to me as if I had seen 
her and known her always; and maybe — Phil. But Jimmy’s 


282 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


here most of all! There’s no use pretending we’re for- 
getting, when we’re not. You and I aren’t built for for- 
getting, Ambo. We’ll never forget.” 

“No, dear; we’ll never forget.” 

“Let’s remember, then,” said Susan; “remember all we 
can. ’ ’ 

For a long hour thereafter we rather mused together 
than conversed. Constraint slipped from us, as those we 
had best loved came back to us, warm and near and living 
in our thoughts of them. No taint of false sentiment, of 
sorrow willfully indulged, marred these memories. Trying 
to be happy we had failed; now, strangely, we came near 
to joy. 

“We haven’t lost them!” exclaimed Susan. “Not any 
part of them ; we never can. ’ ’ 

“They haven’t lost us, then?” 

“ No ’ ’ — she pondered it — ‘ 4 they haven ’t lost us. ’ ’ 

“You mean it, Susan — literally? You believe they still 
live — out there f” 

“And you?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Poor Ambo,” murmured Susan; then, with a quick, 
dancing gleam: “But as Jimmy ’d say, dear, you can just 
take it from me/” 

She spoke of him as if present beside her. A silence fell 
between us and deepened. 

The small, bullet-headed man had just paid his extrava- 
gant bill, distributed his largesse, and was about to depart. 
He was being helped into a sumptuous overcoat, with a 
deep collar of what I took to be genuine Russian sables. 
There was nothing in his officiously tended leave-taking to 
stir my interest ; my eyes rested on him idly for a moment, 
that was all. The head waiter, two under-waiters, and a 
solemn little buttons followed him out to the stair-head, 
with every expression of gratitude and esteem. Passing 
from sight, he passed from my thoughts, leaving with me 
only a vague physical repulsion that barely outlasted his 
departure. 


THE BOOK OP SUSAN 283 

‘ ‘ Do you lmow what I think Phil has done ? ’ ’ Susan was 
asking. 

“Phil?” The name had startled me back to attention. 

“I believe he’s made himself one of them — the peasants, 
I mean — in some remote, dirty, half-starved Russian vil- 
lage.” 

“Why? That’s an odd fancy, dear. And it isn’t much 
like him. Phil’s too clear-headed, or stiff -headed, for such 
mysticism. ’ ’ 

“How little you really know him, then,” she replied. 
“He’s been steering since birth, I feel, toward some great 
final renunciation. I believe he’s made it, now. You’ll 
see, Ambo. Some day we’ll hear of a new prophet, away 
there in the East — where all our living dreams come from ! 
You’ll see!” 

“ ‘In Yishnu-land what Avatar?’ ” I quoted, smiling 
sadly enough; and Susan’s smile wistfully echoed mine, 
even while she raised a warning finger at me. 

‘ ‘ Oh, you of little faith ! ’ ’ she said quite simply. 

x 

We had barely stepped out from the narrow doorway of 
the restaurant into a tenuous, moon-saturated mist, a low- 
lying diaphaneity that left the upper air-lanes openly clear, 
when the sirens were wailing again from every quarter of 
the city. . . . 

“They’re coming early to-night!” I exclaimed. “Well, 
that ends all hope for a taxi home ! We must find an abri.” 

“Nonsense! We’ll walk quietly back along the river. 
Unless” — she teased me — “you really are afraid, Ambo?” 

I tucked her arm firmly into mine. “So you won’t stum- 
ble, Mile, la Reformee!” 

“But it is a nuisance to be lame!” she protested: “I do 
envy you your two good legs, M. le Capitaine.” 

We made our way slowly along the embankment, pass- 
ing the Pont des Arts, and two shadowy lovers paced on 
before us, blotted together, oblivious of the long, eerie rise 


284 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


and fall of the sirens; every twenty yards or so they 
stopped in their tracks, as by a common impulsion, and 
were momentarily lost to time in a passionate embrace. 

Neither Susan nor I spoke of these lovers, who turned 
aside to pass under the black arches of the Institute, into 
the Rue de Seine. . . . 

As we neared the Pont du Carrousel the barrage began, 
at first distant and muffled — the outer guns ; then suddenly 
and grimly nearer. An incessant twinkle of tiny star-white 
points — the bursts of high-explosive shells — drifted toward 
us from the north. So light was the mist, it did not ob- 
scure them ; it barely dimmed the moon. 

“Hold on!” I said, checking Susan; “this is something 
new ! They ’re firing to-night straight across Paris. ’ ’ The 
glitter of star-points seemed in a moment to fill all the 
northern sky; the noise of the barrage trebled, trebled 
again. 

“Why, it’s drum fire!” cried Susan. “Oh, how 
beautiful ! ’ ’ 

“Yes; but we’ll get on faster, all the same! I’ll help 
you ! Come ! ’ ’ 

I put my arm firmly about her waist and almost lifted 
her along with me. By the time we had reached the Pont 
Royal, the high-explosive bursts were directly over us; 
the air rocked with them. I detected, too, at intervals, 
another more ominous sound — that deep, pulsing growl 
which no one having once heard it could ever mistake. 

4 1 Gothas, ’ ’ I growled back at them, * ‘ flying low. They ’ve 
ducked under the guns!” 

And instantly I swung Susan across the open quai to the 
left and plunged with her up an inky defile, the Rue du Bac. 

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, half breath- 
less, dragging against my arm. 

“To the first available abri,” I cried at her, under the 
sky’s reckless tumult. “Don’t stop to argue about it!” 

But she halted me right by the corner of the Rue de 
Lille. “If it’s going to be a bad raid, Ambo, I must get 
to Jimmy’s baby — I must I” 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


285 


“Impossible! It’s at least two miles — and this isn’t 
going to be a picnic, Susan! You’re coming with me/” 
I tightened my arm about her ; every instant now I ex- 
pected the shattering climax of the bombs. 

Then, just as we crossed the Rue de Lille, something 
halted me in my turn. About a hundred yards at my 
right, down toward the Gare D’Orsay, and from the very 
middle of the black street-chasm, a keen, bladelike ray 
of light flashed once and again — sharp, vertical rapier- 
thrusts — straight up through the thin mist-veil into the 
treacherous sky. Followed, doubtless from a darkened up- 
per window, a woman’s frantic shriek: “Espion — espion /” 

Pistol shots next — and rough cries — and a pounding 
charge of feet. . . . Right into my arms he floundered, and 
I tackled him and fell with him to the cobbles and fought 
him there blindly, feeling for his throat. This lasted but 
a moment. Gendarmes tore us apart, in a brief crossing 
flash of electric-torches — and I caught just one glimpse of 
a bare bullet-head, of a bloated, discolored face, of promi- 
nent staring eyes, maddened by fear. There could be no 
mistake. It was our little man of the Pantagruelian ban- 
quet. We had watched him eating his last fabulous meal 
— his farewell to Egypt. 

And that is all I just then clearly remember. ... I am 
told that nine bombs fell in a sweeping circle throughout 
this district; one of them, in the very courtyard of the 
War Office; one of them — of 300 kilos — perhaps a square 
from where we stood. There was a rush past of hurtling 
fragments — glass, chimney-tiles, chips of masonry, que 
sais-je ? — and even this I report only because I have been 
credibly so informed. 

What next I experienced was pain, unlocalized at first, 
yet somehow damnably concentrated: pure, white-hot es- 
sence of pain. And through the stiff hell of it I was, and 
was not, aware of someone — some one — some one — murmur- 
ing love and pity and mortal anguish. . . . 

“Ambo — you wouldn’t leave me — not you! Not you, 
Ambo — not alone. ...” 


286 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


The pain dimmed off from me in an ebbing, dull-red 
wave ; great coils of palpable darkness swirled down upon 
me to smother me; I struggled to rise from beneath them 
— fling them off. . . . From an infinite distance, a woman’s 
cry threaded through them, like a needle through mufflings 
of wool, and pricked me to an instant, a single instant, 
of clear consciousness. I opened my eyes on Susan’s; I 
strove to answer them, tell her I understood. Susan says 
that I did answer them — that I even smiled. But I can 
feel back now only to a vast sinking away, depth under 
depth under depth, down — down — down — down. . . . 

XI 

The rest, however, I thank God, is not yet silence ; though 
it is high time to make an end of this long and all too 
faulty record. 

They did various things to me at the hospital, from time 
to time ; they removed hard substances from me that "were 
distinctly out of place in my interior; they also removed 
certain portions of my authentic anatomy — three fingers of 
my left hand, among others, and my left leg to the knee. 
This was not in itself agreeable, and I shall always regret 
their loss; yet those weeks of progressive operation and 
tardy recuperation were, up to that period, the happiest, 
the most fulfilled weeks of my life. And surely egotism 
can go no farther ! For these weeks of my triumphant hap- 
piness were altogether the darkest, saddest, cruellest weeks 
of the war. In a world without light, my heart sang in 
my breast, sang hallelujahs, and would not be cast down. 
Susan loved me — me — had always loved me ! Bheims soon 
might fall, Amiens might fall, the channel ports, Paris, 
London, the Seven Seas — the World! What did it mat- 
ter! Susan loved me — loved me! 

And even now — though Susan is ashamed for me that I 
can say it — though I feel that I ought to be ashamed that 
I can say it — though I wonder that I am not — though I 
try to be — well, I am not ashamed ! 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


287 


Final Note, by Susan — insisted upon: “But all the same, 
secretly, he is ashamed. For there’s nobody in the world 
like Ambo, whether for dearness or general absurdity. 
Why shouldn’t he have been a little happy, if he could 
manage it, throughout those interminable weeks of physi- 
cal pain? He suffered day and night, preferring not to 
be kept under morphine too constantly. I won’t say he 
was a hero; he was , but there’s nothing to be puffed up 
about nowadays in that. If the war has proved anything, 
it is that in nearly every man, when his particular form 
of Zero Hour sounds for him, some kind of a self-despising 
hero is waiting, and ready to act or endure or be broken 
and cast away. We all know that now. It’s the corner- 
stone for a possible Utopia: no, it’s more than that — it’s 
the whole foundation. But I didn’t mean to say so when 
I started this note. 

“All I meant to say was that you must never take 
Ambo au pied de la lettre. I’m not in the least as he’s 
hymned me — but that, surely, you’ve guessed between the 
lines. What is much more important is that he’s not in 
the least as he has painted himself. But unless I were 
to rewrite his whole book for him — which wouldn’t be 
tactful in an otherwise spoiled and contented wife — I could 
never make this clear, or do my strange, too sensitive man 
the full justice he deserves. He’s — oh, but what’s the 
use! There isn’t anybody in the world like Ambo.” 

XII 

More than a year has already passed since those dark- 
bright days, the spring of 1918. Down here in quiet, sil- 
very Provence, at our nursing-home for children — I call 
it ours — the last of the cherry blossoms are falling now in 
our walled orchard close. As I write, James Aulard Kane 
sits — none too steadily — among a snow of petals, and 
sweeps them together in miniature drifts with two very 
grubby little hands. He is a likely infant and knows defi- 
nitely what he wants from life, which is mostly food. He 


288 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


talks nothing but French — that is, he emits the usual baby 
grunts and snortings in a funny harsh accent caught from 
his Marseillaise nurse. Susan is far too busy to improve 
this accent as she would like to do: perhaps it would be 
simpler to say that she is far too busy. She is the queen-bee 
of this country hive ; and I — I am a harmless enough drone. 
They let me dawdle about here and do this and that; but 
the sun grows more powerful daily, and I sleep a good deal 
now through the warmer hours. I am haunted by fewer 
mysterious twinges, here and there, when I sleep. . . . 

Meanwhile, the world-cauldron bubbles, and the bub- 
bles keep bursting, and I read of their bursting and shake 
my head. When a man begins shaking his head over the 
news of the day, he is done for; a back number. Susan 
never shakes her head ; and it ’s rather hard on her, I think, 
to be the wife of a back number. But she ’s far too thought- 
ful of me ever to seem to mind. 

Only yesterday I quoted some lines to her, from Coven- 
try Patmore. Susan doesn’t like Coventry Patmore; the 
mystical Unknown Eros he celebrates strikes her as — well, 
perhaps I had better not go into that. But the lines I 
quoted — they had been much in my mind lately — were 
these : 


For want of me the world’s course will not fail; 
When all its work is done the lie shall rot; 

The truth is great and shall prevail 

When none cares whether it prevail or not. 

1 1 Stuff ! W e do care ! ’ ’ said Susan. ‘ ‘ And it won ’t pre- 
vail, either, unless we make it. Who ’s working harder than 
you to make it prevail, I should like to know!” 

You see how she includes me. ... So this book is my 
poor tribute to her thoughtfulness, this Book of Susan. 

But sometimes I sit and wonder. Shall we ever, I won- 
der, go back to my ancestral mansion on Hillhouse Avenue 
and quietly settle down there to the old securities, the 


THE BOOK OF SUSAN 


289 


old, slightly disdainful calm ? I doubt it. Tumps, ancient 
valetudinarian, softened by age; Togo, rheumatic, but 
steeped in his deeply racial, his Oriental indifferentism — 
they are the inheritors of that august tradition, and they 
become it worthily. For them it exists and is enough ; for 
us it is shattered. Phil, a later Waring, is lost in Bussia. 
Jimmy is gone. But Susan will do, I know, more than 
one woman’s part to help in creating a more livable world 
for his son, and I shall gain some little strength for that 
coming labor, spending it as I can. It will be an interest- 
ing world for those who survive ; a dusk chaos just paling 
eastward. I shall hardly see even the beginnings of dawn. 
But — with Susan beside me — I shall have lived. 

Farewell, then, Hillhouse Avenue! . . . Make way for 
Birch Street ! 












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